September 25, 2024
Award-winning actress turned television fitness guru Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) just turned fifty. She heard that her slimy boss Harvey (Dennis Quaid) wanted to replace her with someone fresher. Desperate, Elisabeth accepted a mysterious offer to buy a chemical called the Substance which can bring out the most perfect version of herself. Right after Elisabeth injected the single-use Activator into her vein, Sue (Margaret Qualley) was born.
The Substance could really make dreams of youth and beauty come true albeit with a twist. However, it came with very strict rules to make sure that balance was kept between the new self and the old self. The instructions emphasized that there was only one being, even if new self and old self were practically doing things to destroy each other out of selfishness and jealousy, respectively. This made for a gripping internal tug-of-war of taking control.
This audaciously shocking body-horror film was written and directed by French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat, in only her second feature film after her acclaimed debut in 2017 with "Revenge." Fargeat did not shirk from showing exaggeratedly disgusting scenes of graphic gore and grotesque deformity to drive home her satiric points against ageism in show business and the extremes aging stars resort to in order to maintain their beauty and fame.
Demi Moore gave a brave fearless portrayal of fading star Elisabeth, in a role so wild and out of her comfort zone. Elisabeth was a physically-tough and emotionally-taxing character which can earn Moore an Oscar nomination for Best Actress (and even win, like Elisabeth did). This role of Sue will most likely be Margaret Qualley's star-making breakthrough. Her sexy Sue was akin to a Frankenstein's monster who got caught up and blinded by her fame.
Because the script was so well-plotted, it was not difficult to see why Fargeat won the Best Screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival where it made its world premiere. Since then, it had also won a number of audience choice awards in the film festivals, despite being dark and disturbing. Audiences appreciated how Fargeat really went all out crazy for this, in the process also paying tribute to horror classics, like "Freaks," "The Shining," and "Carrie."
The version we watched during the commercial run is shorter by about 3 minutes from the original version. This means that a number of scenes had been deleted in order to satisfy the criteria of the MTRCB for R-16. Whatever those supposedly objectionable scenes were, we may never see them anymore and that's a shame. However, Fargeat's dark message against Hollywood's superficial bias for youth and beauty still hits its target very hard. 8/10
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