The Substance

Outlook on the aging female body depicted from a feminist perspective.

The movie starts strong with Demi Moore as an aging superstar. To relive her youth, she creates a younger version of herself by splitting her body. The younger self feeds off the unconscious older self, and after a week, they switch roles through a blood-swap. The older version wakes up, eats normally to restore spinal fluid, which is vital for the younger self to survive.

But her younger self becomes too greedy and feeds too much from her older self. This will have consequences. I will not spoil it.

So far so good. Very interesting movie. Though there's too much sexualization. The movie execs found a perfect excuse to constantly zoom in on her behind and reproductive organs in slow motion as she's an aerobics teacher. Yet at the same time the movie depicts all men as idiots and pigs, because that is what post-modern movies do these days.

It felt inevitable that there would be no good ending, but I kept wondering about the big message. Turns out, there wasn’t one. It’s as if someone spilled coffee on the script, leading to a quick, improvised finish - a nihilistic, quasi-psychedelic gore fest.

Demi Moore did an amazing job by the way. She received way too little credit throughout her career. Her fictional younger self, Margaret Qualley, was OK enough; it clearly wasn't about her, but about her thighs, butt and something in between. The rest of the men were depicted as simpletons or pigs and are irrelevant. They were the so called satirical part of the movie.

Instead of special effects, practical effects were used. It wasn't that bad implemented at all. I could overlook a tiny mishap due to the story being interesting.

The fictional world is full of illogical choices. Demi Moore’s character, Elisabeth Sparkle, creates a clone to relive her youth, but there’s no clear benefit for her. Even as the dangers from her out-of-control clone became obvious, she didn’t stop it, despite having the option. These strange decisions kept bothering me throughout the film.

When Elisabeth Sparkle meets an older man in a diner who’s in the same situation but worse off, their brief conversation hinted at a deeper message. Instead, it fizzled out, making the scene feel completely irrelevant.

To conclude: Demi Moore and the initial story were good. Lack of common sense, unneeded nudity and cheap gore ending were bad.