French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat’s debut film Revenge, from 2017, took the rape/revenge movie concept and tore it for a new one. Revenge is a loud feminist battle cry against the kinds of societal aggression women face, and a triumphant scream in the face of the misogyny engrained in movies like this. Her second feature, The Substance, won best screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. It’s a movie I had heard lots about going into it, and one I couldn’t help but have some preconceived expectations for, before the opening credits rolled. And that’s a dangerous thing for a movie to have to live up to. However, one should not underestimate the power of a Coralie Fargeat joint. The Substance is a film I will not forget or stop thinking about anytime soon. This is one of the most powerful films I’ve seen in all of 2024, and likely will be remembered as one of the year’s best.

Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is an acclaimed actress, who currently hosts a very 1980s-looking exercise TV show. She meets with the smarmy, disgusting network executive (Dennis Quaid) and is fired on her 50th birthday. He tells her that her career is essentially over. She decides to order an experimental black market drug called The Substance, which promises, with one injection, to unlock core parts of her DNA, creating a younger, more perfect version of herself. The version of you that you’ve always wanted to be, etc. It sounds great, but the Substance has a very specific list of rules, and if one does not follow these instructions, bad things will start to happen. And of course, bad things start to happen.

The Substance is brutal and brilliant. It’s gonzo, go-for-broke, increasingly bizarre levels of batshittery and over-the-top nuttiness. It presents a level of body horror that we do not see very often anymore in films that receive a wide release in America. There are scenes in this movie that made me gasp, cringe, and cover my eyes, squinting at the screen. And yet, it’s a razor sharp indictment of toxic beauty culture, and the American obsession with image. It’s also a heartbreaking character study about a person whose self image is so fragile and so broken, they’ll do just about anything to change themselves. We all would change things about ourselves if we could, and The Substance takes that idea and blows it up from the inside, and nobody comes out of this thing unscathed, especially not the audience.

Demi Moore has worked consistently over the years, most notably in Ryan Murphy’s recent Feud: Capote vs. the Swans miniseries, but it’s been a while since she has had the opportunity to sink her teeth into a role like this. The story of a woman putting herself through hell to achieve an unattainable level of perfection is probably something Moore knows well, and the battle cry at the center of this script is something that must have attracted her. And she’s called upon to do all sorts of wild things in this movie, and she is game for all of it. I’m tempted to say this is career-best work, or career-defining work. 

There is a certain scene in this movie where Elisabeth is getting ready to go on a date. She puts on a beautiful red dress and does her makeup and if you saw her on the street, you would tell her she looked stunning. Then on her way to the door, she sees the younger version of herself on a billboard and immediately goes back and futzes with her hair, her makeup, her outfit, and gets to a point where she realizes she will never see herself in the way she needs to. She will never really be comfortable in her own skin. And that is the kind of emotionally devastating sequence that grounds this film in the kind of humanity it needs to really work. There is so much honesty and emotional truth in Demi Moore’s performance, and it’s unexpected, as she does not really need to be going for it so hard at this stage in her career. But Moore is quick to remind the viewer what a powerhouse she has always been.

And Margaret Qualley, who has impressed me over the past few years in films like Sanctuary and Drive-Away Dolls, is terrific here as well, also asked to go to some bizarre, off-kilter places with her performance. There isn’t as much to the alter ego Sue as there is to Elisabeth, but Qualley’s performance is strong enough that it barely makes a difference. Dennis Quaid, in a role originally meant for Ray Liotta, before the actor’s untimely death, is doing super over-the-top, almost campy work here, as the slimeball studio exec named Harvey (wink). And the more I think about this performance, the more I think, well, maybe this isn’t as out there and over the top as it looks. No doubt there are people in suits that are just as gross and predatory as this character. Quaid is definitely having fun here.

The Substance is a long movie, it’s just under two and a half hours long, but Fargeat seems to have a great understanding of pacing because I felt like I was on the verge of a full-blown anxiety attack for about 90% of this movie. The sound design adds to the gruesomeness onscreen in a deeply effective way. The cinematography is bold and inventive, the score is perfect. And the way practical effects are used, particularly in the third act, are nothing short of remarkable. I don’t want to give too much away, and you’ll definitely know it when you see it, but the attention to detail in a thing we see in the last twenty minutes or so of this film, is shocking, disgusting, horrific and deeply memorable, and would not have had nearly the same impact if Fargeat CGI’ed this instead.

Coralie Fargeat’s sophomore film is exploring similar themes she tackled in Revenge, but in bigger, more experimental, more psychologically complex and even more grotesque ways. There are images in The Substance that you will never be able to unsee, and that’s very much the point. It becomes something of a monster movie, and the monster is something that exists inside all of us. I was awestruck and in shock through the majority of this running time, but I gave myself a day before I wrote this review, because what this film brings up thematically, is deeply fascinating to reflect on after the shock has worn off.

It’s a wild ride, and it’s certainly not for the squeamish, but The Substance might end up being one of the most important films of 2024. It’s a remarkable achievement for a film to be a fully bonkers, out of control horror picture, and also have something genuinely thoughtful and worthwhile to say about the way we live now, and who we are to each other, but more importantly to ourselves. See it with an audience, see it with friends. It will give you lots to discuss after, although you probably won’t want to go out for dinner afterwards. It’s a bleak, brutal, grim and captivating piece of work.