The Substance
| The Substance | |
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 American theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Coralie Fargeat |
| Written by | Coralie Fargeat |
| Produced by |
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| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Benjamin Kračun |
| Edited by |
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| Music by | Raffertie |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 141 minutes[3] |
| Countries |
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| Language | English |
| Budget | $18 million[4] |
| Box office | $77–82 million |
The Substance is a 2024 body horror film written and directed by Coralie Fargeat. It follows a fading celebrity (Demi Moore) who is fired by her producer (Dennis Quaid) due to her age and uses a black market drug that creates a younger woman (Margaret Qualley) with unexpected side effects.
Fargeat wrote the screenplay to explore societal pressures surrounding women's bodies and aging. Principal photography took place in France from August to October 2022. The film is noted for its use of satire and grotesque, hyperrealistic imagery, accomplished through prosthetic makeup and other practical effects, including bodysuits, puppetry, dummies, and approximately 21,000 liters (5,500 U.S. gallons) of theatrical blood. Originally set for distribution by Universal Pictures, the rights were later acquired by Mubi after a dispute between Fargeat and Universal over final cut privilege.
The Substance premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2024, where it won Best Screenplay and was nominated for the Palme d'Or. The film was theatrically released in the United Kingdom and the United States on September 20, 2024, and in France on November 6, 2024. It received widespread acclaim, with particular praise for Fargeat's writing and directing, the special effects, and Moore's performance. At the box office, the film grossed $77–82 million on a budget of $18 million, becoming Mubi's highest-grossing film. Moore's performance earned her a Golden Globe Award, Critics' Choice Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award, as well as nominations for an Academy Award and BAFTA Award. The film also received nominations for Best Picture and Best Director at the Academy Awards, Critics' Choice and Golden Globes.
Plot
[edit]On her 50th birthday, faded Hollywood film star Elisabeth Sparkle is dismissed from her long-running aerobics TV show by its producer, Harvey, due to her age. Elisabeth crashes her car while distracted by a billboard of herself being taken down. At the hospital, a young male nurse gives her a flash drive advertising "The Substance", a black market drug that promises a "younger, more beautiful, more perfect" version of oneself.
Elisabeth orders The Substance and injects the single-use serum. She convulses as a younger woman named Sue emerges from a slit in her back. The two bodies must switch consciousness once every week, with the inactive body remaining unconscious and fed intravenously. Daily injections of stabilizer fluid, extracted from the original body, are required to prevent Sue from deteriorating. Sue becomes an overnight sensation after auditioning as Elisabeth's replacement, and Harvey offers her the chance to host the New Year's Eve show. While Sue lives a confident and hedonistic life, Elisabeth becomes a self-hating recluse. Near the end of one weekly cycle, Sue brings a man home for casual sex; she delays the switch by extracting additional stabilizer fluid, causing Elisabeth's right index finger to rapidly age. Elisabeth contacts the supplier, who warns that delaying the switching schedule will lead to irreversible, rapid aging of the original body.
Elisabeth and Sue gradually become separate personalities and begin to hate each other. Elisabeth resents Sue's frequent disregard of the switching schedule, causing further aging, while Sue is appalled by Elisabeth's descent into unhealthy binge-eating. Following a particularly destructive episode, Sue stockpiles stabilizer fluid and refuses to switch back. Three months later, on the day before the New Year's Eve show, Sue runs out of stabilizer fluid and contacts the supplier, who informs her she must switch back to replenish the fluid. When they switch, Elisabeth finds herself transformed into a deformed, hag-like hunchback. To stop Sue aging her further, Elisabeth orders a serum designed to terminate her. However, Elisabeth, still craving Sue's celebrity status, stops before fully injecting the serum and resuscitates Sue, leaving both of them conscious. Realizing Elisabeth's initial intent, Sue beats Elisabeth to death before leaving to host the show.
Without Elisabeth, and due to most of the serum already being injected, Sue's body rapidly deteriorates. She attempts to create a new version of herself using the leftover substance, despite the single-use warning. This results in the creation of a grotesque mutated body, "Monstro Elisasue", with both Elisabeth's and Sue's faces. Wearing a mask cut from a poster of Elisabeth, Monstro Elisasue attempts to host the show, but the audience erupts into chaos. An audience member decapitates her, only for an even more mutated head to grow back, and one of her arms to break and drench the audience and studio in blood.
Fleeing the studio, Monstro Elisasue collapses and explodes into viscera. Elisabeth's original face detaches from the gore, crawling onto her neglected star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She smiles as she hallucinates being admired before melting into a puddle of blood, which is cleaned up by a sidewalk scrubber the next day.
Cast
[edit]- Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle
- Margaret Qualley as Sue
- Dennis Quaid as Harvey
- Edward Hamilton-Clark as Fred
- Gore Abrams as Oliver
- Oscar Lesage as Troy
- Christian Erickson as man at diner
- Robin Greer as nurse
- Tom Morton as doctor
- Hugo Diego Garcia as Diego
- Yann Bean as The Substance voice
Production
[edit]The Substance was an international co-production between France, the United Kingdom and the United States.[5] Coralie Fargeat was director and producer alongside Working Title Films co-producers Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan,[6][7][8] and Blacksmith, a Paris-based production company[9] created by Fargeat that same year.[5][10] Filming began on May 9, 2022,[11] and wrapped in October 2022, spanning 108 shooting days.[note 1] The film's budget was $17.5-18 million.[note 2][4][16] The project took five years from concept to release.[18]
Conception and screenplay
[edit]
After the critical success of Revenge (2017) in the United States, Fargeat was in contention to direct studio films including the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) film Black Widow (2021).[19] However, the prospect of a studio film did not appeal to her, as she would not receive final cut privilege.[19] Fargeat spent several months in Los Angeles following the release of Revenge, and began writing the first scenes of The Substance, as a spec script, at a coffee shop in Silver Lake;[20] she became a producer to maintain creative control.[21] Eric Fellner, who co-produced the film, traveled to Paris several times for lunch with Fargeat after seeing Revenge in 2017 to persuade her to choose Working Title for her next project.[22] The screenplay was developed over two years, loosely inspired by her short Reality+ (2014).[23] The script was written in both English and French, with descriptions in French,[24] but with English-speaking audiences in mind.[14]
Fargeat aimed to continue the feminist themes developed in Revenge, exploring the pressures and expectations placed on women.[25][26][27] During the period when she began writing the film, she was in her 40s and was confronting negative thoughts about her relevance and appearance. "I really started to think and [have] these voices in my head like, 'Now your life is over. No one is going to care about you.'"[28] She described the process of making the film as a way to confront and release this internalized violence,[note 3] using the body horror genre as a "weapon of expression".[32][33][24][34]
Fargeat crafted the 146-page script[35][36] with a scant 29 pages dedicated to dialogue.