"Old age ain’t no place for sissies,” Bette Davis once famously quipped, and neither is “The Substance,” writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s outrageous, audacious, and ambitious twist on wanting “a younger, better self.” This bloody body horror satire is sure to have viewers gasping and laughing throughout, especially during its over-the-top finale.
From the opening scene of an egg being injected with a serum and replicating itself to a wordless montage depicting Hollywood starlet Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) losing her luster, “The Substance” is cleverly told. Fargeat shoots in overhead and in extreme closeup to maximize discomfort — even Elisabeth stabbing an olive in her fourth martini is startling — and when the filmmaker features a wide shot, it can be disorienting, disgusting, or both. This film is designed to make even jaded people squeamish, but it does so to make its points about how women in particular, and society in general, crave youth and beauty — and the lengths they will go to keep that.
