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The Substance opens with its simplest, most natural image: a raw chicken’s egg, the yolk yellow and dewy, lying flat on a white background. A long needle full of an unnaturally green fluid enters the frame and is injected into the yolk by a gloved hand, causing the egg to jitter and duplicate itself. This successful test immediately demonstrates the film’s premise—a substance that can create another version of an extant being—but also references fertility. Women, as any card-carrying shithead will tell you (usually unprompted!), start to lose their value after age 25, as the number of their eggs starts to decline. At age 35, that decline becomes more precipitous. The eggs that remain are probably all fucked up and no good. And as any card-carrying evolutionary psychologist—an academic whose “findings” are often nearly as dim as an incel’s—will tell you, this is why women are choosier about who they mate with. We only have so much to offer, and the clock is always ticking. Even with great financial resources, rewinding it may not be an option. If you’ve never heard that noise, consider yourself lucky. It only grows louder as time goes on.
Writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s high-concept film ticks with increasing forcefulness in a manner that is immediately recognizable to those of us in the club, and expresses that anxiety with alternately rich and crass imagery that conjures a flurry of associations. There is nothing subtle or gentle about Fargeat’s style or point, as no messages from society, media, or the myriad arms of the beauty industrial complex (cosmetics, plastic surgery, MedSpas, skincare companies, social media, etc.) about the importance of maintaining youth and beauty are demure. The stigma of visibly aging doesn’t belong to one gender (thank you, capitalism!), but it’s more forceful for those who identify as female. Even those of us thoroughly divorced from ideas about the necessity of being a mother or having a romantic partner are not immune. Everything good about you is diminished by rules you never wanted to play by. After a certain point, you become invisible.
Oh god, you think. That’s so obvious. I’ve heard this a million times before. Well, of course I disagree with all that misogynistic crap! Is this really necessary? But does art have to be necessary to exist? Does it have to “say” something new or embody our ideals rather than our reality? And have we really had “a million” films that so ruthlessly explore that process of unbecoming? Something like Death Becomes Her, which was written and directed by men and released in 1992, or Blue Jasmine, which was written and directed by a man/noted sex creep and released in 2013? Or do films about a woman getting the boot because she’s too old often have a happy end, all dreamy and inspiring, like An Unmarried Woman (written and directed by a man and released in 1973)? Those stories certainly have their place; a better world is possible. (Paul Mazursky is wonderful.) But we need more fury and nihilism—a pressure release valve. Women aren’t supposed to be angry about this: you either comply or fade away. Girls are doing TikToks about skincare, veneers and “preventative” facelifts are becoming more common, and Ozempic is being prescribed off-label to people who already possess an idealized body type to get even thinner. We live in hell, and The Substance thrusts your face into the filthy toilet that is modern life.
But perhaps, wrapped up in my righteous anger, I’ve gotten ahead of myself. Forget about the eggs, the other kind of eggs, and the inevitable dismissals for a second.
Above all else, Fargeat’s film is superbly crafted and unfolds with little to no dialogue. There isn’t a moment when its protagonist, Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), gives a lengthy monologue about how all of this is unfair or says, “I am tired of being a victim of society’s biases.” Elisabeth is tougher stuff than that, which makes her the perfect target for whoever created the eponymous substance. She’s a longtime television aerobics guru who gets a bouquet of roses, a Paul Prudhomme cookbook, and a pink slip for her 50th birthday. Her show and style are thoroughly stuck in the early ’80s, Jane Fonda–like in her cute leotard and tights, doing joint-friendly workouts. This reference isn’t simply to provide a sense of Elisabeth’s age and the network’s potential issues with her continued employment. Fonda, who long suffered from an eating disorder, introduced Americans to a new means of weight control and bodily change: aerobics. Her VHS tapes are among the best-selling home videos of all time, and the sea change she represents in terms of how women control their bodies—a way to lose weight that’s sorta kinda healthy and empowering—is key.
Elisabeth has not considered a world where she isn’t famous, and her sudden termination leaves her aimless. Yes, she’s got plenty of money, but she wants to feel love from the public that only comes from stardom. Her apartment is large and empty, and the walls barren save for a gigantic, framed photograph of her younger self in workout clothes. The picture is not to taunt herself, something to show her plastic surgeon or licensed esthetician when she goes in for a facial tune-up; it’s her achievement and entire identity. That is her. Well, maybe she is living in the past a bit—she still has a landline and reads print newspapers. In addition to spotting a classified ad for her old job in the paper, she sees a billboard (another piece of old media) with her face on it being torn down, which causes her to crash her car. Her erasure is total.
During her post-crash checkup, a suspiciously beautiful young nurse (Robin Greer) inspects her spine and tells her, privately and quietly, that she’d be a good candidate. A few days later, she learns what he was referring to: a substance that will make you your best self—young, captivating, electric. Not smarter; just younger. Elisabeth wants this key out of her prison, out of her aging body, so badly that she asks no questions and simply goes to pick it up in a seedy part of town. She’s number 503, and the wall of lockers in the room she retrieves it from reveals she’s not the only member of this exciting, elite substance club, which subtly supports the idea that this is somehow safe. The most effective beauty interventions are, of course, restricted to the rich and famous. (Don’t believe any celebrity’s social media posts about using a fucking rose quartz face roller; they’ve got access to laser technology you wouldn’t believe.)
The substance, like the film itself, has ultra-cool, stylish packaging that’s easy to read. Although split into two, you share everything and must switch off every seven days. Elisabeth self-administers the drug, which, like many more advanced beauty treatments, is incredibly painful and involves needles. (Seriously, read about Rejuran.) After writhing in agony on her bathroom floor as the skin of her back splits open, she blacks out and we get that better version: Sue (Margaret Qualley).
Sue has everything in all the right places: perfect ass, pouty lips, lithe limbs, and milky white skin that has no wrinkles. She’s the societal ideal of beauty, and Sue quickly slides into her newfound life and starts crawling up the fame ladder. She nails the audition to replace Elisabeth, overseen by Harvey (a pitch-perfect Dennis Quaid), the piggish network exec who fired Elisabeth while inhaling mayonnaise-covered shrimp. He drools over his discovery, a new object to be aroused by and exploit financially. And Sue, who only speaks in soothing, cooing tones, is ready for it. She too wants to be loved by everyone and feel the power that comes with it.
With its sparse dialogue, The Substance never explicitly states how Elisabeth experiences Sue’s consciousness and adventures in fucking random guys. They are two, but they are one. Elisabeth’s days as herself are long and empty: she cannot enjoy her own life and mostly mopes around the apartment. Soon, a rivalry between them begins to take shape. Sue wants more time, and she starts to suck out more of Elisabeth’s spinal fluid to extend her allotted week. This results in what can perhaps be best described as the croneification of Elisabeth’s body: first a gnarled finger, then a twisted arthritic leg. Elisabeth, who looks amazing—for her age—starts to become elderly in ways that are beyond medical help, beyond the bounds of how stars are supposed to look. She becomes unrecognizable and hunched.
In the film’s final third, this battle comes to a head: on the eve of Sue’s great coming out (hosting a New Year’s Eve special), Elisabeth’s body has been sucked dry, and she begins to literally fall apart. In desperation, Sue uses the first vial of the substance to create an even better version of herself, but instead rears a monstrous fusion of Elisabeth and Sue: Elisasue. Lumpy and deformed with Elisabeth’s head, frozen in a terrified scream, sticking out of her back, Elisasue lumbers back to the studio. To hide her imperfections, Elisasue cuts Elisabeth’s face off the large portrait that’s been looming in Elisabeth’s apartment and clumsily sticks it on her own monstrous rictus. Somehow this works—until it doesn’t. In a wild Grand Guignol scene, Elisasue addresses the crowd, her words muffled and mangled by her deformed mouth. When Elisabeth’s face falls off, the crowd loses their shit and begins to attack Elisasue while shouting, “Kill the monster!”
There are many references to other films, fables, and novels in The Substance, but this scene makes clear that we’ve been watching a reimagining of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, albeit told from the perspective of the monster, the entire time, one who’s attempting to exist in a cruel world that has no place for those who fail to fit in. (Shelley’s work comes to mind as a little girl in the audience, dressed up as Sue, is terribly frightened by Elisasue, which, along with her freakishness, spurs the mob to action.) However, it’s not like there isn’t room for laughs—Elisasue’s arm abruptly falls off, and she begins to spray the crowd with a firehose of blood from the stump. It goes on and on, but also serves as what a body is: not something simply to be looked at but something full of blood, organs, piss, and shit. The things Elisabeth and Sue never thought about when enjoying their bodies—things that we don’t think about unless there’s something wrong with us—come to the fore.
The desperation that leads Elisabeth and Sue to Elisasue’s creation shows that the two women really are the same: neither wants to lose their pretty privilege. This is the only way they can be at the top in a world that doesn’t actually give a shit about empowerment or independence or talent. The clock is ticking, and they both want more time, that thing money can’t buy. Their desperation and competition seem ugly, then become ugly. But they aren’t wrong to ask for more time. None of us are. The mania driving them, the mental calculus of what and what not to put in their bodies, are not of their own making. Trust me: there’s nothing hyperbolic about The Substance. If someone suggests otherwise, they’re telling on themselves. 
is the author of David Cronenberg: Clinical Trials. She is the former digital producer at Film Comment and the host of its podcast, as well as former VP of Digital at Harper’s Magazine.
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