The Substance, dir. Coralie Fargeat

Writer-director Coralie Fargeat's almost-perfect Anglophone debut will make Hollywood sit up and take notice, even if it maniacally degloves (sans anaesthetic) the surgically perfect veneer of the latter, and doesn't bother to clean up after.

Demi Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a faded film star relegated to doing Jane Fonda-style jazzerobics videos. On her 50th birthday, she is unceremoniously let go by a Hollywood executive unsubtly named Harvey (played to gross, slimy, bombastic perfection by Dennis Quaid). This (coupled with a near-death experience) drives Elisabeth to seek out a hush-hush treatment called The Substance, which promises to create a "more perfect" version of the user.

The Substance is delivered in sleek packaging (lovingly designed by Jony Ive and Steve Jobs, at least in my headcanon). Said sleek packaging makes it very clear that Elisabeth has to embark on a strict regime (involving too many seven-inch hypodermic needles entering the body too often in hyper close-ups) which must culminate in a switch between herself and her "better self" every seven days. (What could go wrong, reader?)

And that initial switch, between Elisabeth and her younger self named Sue, is an uncompromising sequence by Fargeat that sets the tone for where she wants to go. It's equal parts Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssey, gleefully bloody yet unexpectedly psychedelic. Sue is played by Margeret Qualley, a second stroke of casting genius. Qualley's an rising actress in her own right, but also the real-life daughter of Andie MacDowell, who dominated the box office alongside Demi Moore in the 80s and 90s. There's an essay somewhere to be written about the metatexutality of a damp Sue/Qualley emerging from the spine of an unconscious Elisabeth/Moore.

To her absolute credit, Fargeat can keep ramping up the body horror as the film slashes along, swinging her camera through nauseating tracking shots and doubling down on grossly uncomfortable close-ups, underlaid with disorienting industrial techno soundtracked by British artist Raffertie. All of this to heighten the inevitable downward spiral of Elisabeth/Sue as they (and not the sexist and exploitive Hollywood patriarchy) become their own worst enemy. A poignant yet harrowing sequence takes place when Elisabeth is about to leave her apartment for a date. She cannot, however, find satisfaction with her makeup. She ends up unable to leave her house at all, removing and reapplying cosmetic product multiple times in increasingly violent fashion.

The film apparently took a real toll on both Qualley and Moore; Qualley had acne and suffered panic attacks, while Moore got shingles and lost 10kg. Both their performances are outstanding; I just don't know if it was worth the trauma. It's a feminine analog of the physical lengths male actors like Christian Bale and Tom Hardy go to for their roles, and are still applauded for.

A friend mentioned that at their screening people applauded when the credits rolled. I definitely did not. I was fully with Fargeat's twists and turns before the final act, unable to predict how exactly she wanted to wrap it all up. The ending, however, swerved all the way into absurdist blood-drenched surrealism that I don't think served Fargeat's initial satirical and feminist intentions. The film ended 15 minutes after it actually did, landing on a sentimental final shot that feels false and unearned.

Viewing it in the cinema was a formidable shared experience with strangers, to sit in the dark and hear "WTFs" and "OMGs" around you uttered aloud. But once is enough. Fargeat has given me enough of body horror for 2024, I think. (What could go wrong, reader? What?)