HORROR; 2hr 20min
STARRING: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid
Skin depths: Moore
Subtlety is nowhere near the table in writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s obliterative body-horror ride. Its anti-commodification message could not be more brutal: for women, especially those transitory creations pinned in the glare of a spotlight, ageing is the enemy. As fading Hollywood star Elisabeth Sparkle, a dauntless Moore trips the taut fantastic in her Jane Fonda–flavoured TV aerobics gig. But looks are infamously skin deep, and to the network heavy who calls the shots (Quaid, hyperbolically repulsive), 50-year-old Ms Sparkle has emphatically lost both hers and her job. So when Elisabeth learns about wonder drug The Substance — self-injected to create a younger and therefore automatically improved new her — how can she not go the rejuvenation road?
The resulting scene is indelibly grotesque, with Elisabeth giving excruciating birth via her spine to a flawless nymphet (Qualley as Sue) with whom she now shares week-in, week-out living space. A process this twisted has to be an apocalypse waiting to thunder down. Plus, there are Questions. Who is behind the anonymous program? What are its long term effects? Also, who gives a damn?
Cinematographer Benjamin Kracun’s stickybeaking camera is too busy at the outset getting intimate with Qualley’s perfect curves to concern itself with any bigger pictures. When those curves become S-bends and the Sparkle show hits the skids, its road to hell is an orgy of self-punishment for Elisabeth, cannibalised into a monstrosity by her ravenous younger self. (Take a deep bow, Special and Visual Effects!) Her outrageous downfall is a toxic blast of envy and need whose ferocity redefines insane.
