The Substance
If you're going to make it in Hollywood, it helps if you've got a photogenic mug and nicely toned bod.
While it certainly helps to be talented, it's much easier to get your foot in the door if you've been blessed with George Clooney's natural good looks, or Grace Kelly's crystal blue eyes and unblemished countenance.
In this horrifically cautionary tale, however, French director Coralie Fargeat delivers a wicked, twisted and gory head-feck that takes Hollywood's obsession with commercialised beauty and beats it to a pulp with a baseball bat. Taking absolutely no prisoners, Fargeat takes obvious delight at dismantling these modern concepts of celebrity and the body beautiful, and reverse engineering their sentiment into an altogether sinister and grotesque parable of David Cronenberg-like proportions.
In a stroke of absolute casting genius, Demi Moore returns to the limelight here playing Elisabeth Sparkle, a beautiful and popular star who has made her fortune strutting her stuff in an aerobics TV show that would teach Jane Fonda a thing or two. Elisabeth's life and career couldn't get any better, until that is, she turns 50. Almost as soon as she blows out her birthday candles, her obnoxious agent ditches her and her career takes a very swift nosedive.
Clearly devastated and unable to cope rejection, the unfortunate star goes on the tear, loses control of her car and ends up in hospital.
But it's in hospital that Elizabeth is offered a chance at redemption thanks to a highly mysterious new drug known as the ‘Substance’. Amazingly, the wonder drug can split the physical form into two different bodies, allowing the user to experience life as both an older and younger version of themselves.
The one and only rule is that each body must take it in weekly turns to be the dominant form. As you can imagine, it's not long before the young and older version of Elisabeth begin to fight for their very survival.
Yes, it's OTT in the extreme, but there's a visceral loathing and brutal self-destructive streak at this film's dark heart, and you can't help but gleefully fall for its twisted and crazy mindset.
It's part satire, part horror flick, and feels very much like a cranked-up, sexed-up episode of The Twilight Zone, but much, much better.
Fargeat keeps us guessing as to what's going to happen next, and ensures the story here has more twists and turns than a trip to a theme park. The cast are also magnificent. Dennis Quaid is a perfect, smarmy creep as Elizabeth's agent Harvey, Margaret Qualley sizzles as her demented younger version Sue, and Demi Moore steals the show as the aging star, cursed to absolute oblivion.
Brace yourself folks, if you go to see The Substance, prepare for a bumpy and unforgettable ride.
