The Substance

The Substance, when it comes down to it, has very little substance. Sure, it’s a body horror film and contains underlying commentary about women ageing out of Hollywood leading roles earlier than their male counterparts. Sure, Demi Moore’s Elizabeth Sparkle and Dennis Quaid’s “Harvey” Hollywood producer (heh!) characters are caricatures of the ego-driven actor and the sleaziest, most vile movie producer.  Even worse, the movie’s end is projected well in advance (at least in my mind).

What is unexpected is the over-the-top meshing of motifs of Kubrick’s take on The Shining with sequences of long hallways (some blood-drenched),  David Lynch’s Elephant Man, and a Monty Pythonesque homage to Mssr. Creosote’s vomiting over everything, only in The Substance, the puke is chartreuse, and the blood spewing is on an audience rather than fellow diners.

But onward.

Elizabeth is aging out of her star performance job, doing aerobic workouts on television (think Jane Fonda’s workout tapes of the '80s, but a shallower Fonda); she overhears her boss (Quaid) talking about replacing her with a “fresh face.” She works up some righteous anger, and while driving to her incredible condo (a penthouse?), she gets T-boned at an intersection. She ends up at a hospital and is found to be in good shape, with no broken bones. A very young doctor tests her backbone for some reason and mutters something like ‘you’d be a perfect specimen’. Weird.

Unseen to Elizabeth and viewers, the young doc slipped a note and a USB into her pocket, which she finds after leaving the hospital. The message on the stick is something about regaining former youth with “the substance”. At first, she discards it, then, following some unmemorable scenes, recovers it from the trash and calls the number on it. Eventually, she is mailed an access card and given a street address to visit. That address turns out to be down a dodgy back alley. She enters using the card and finds a white mail box (among a dozen others) with her designated number on it (503). From the box, she retrieves the substance, nourishment pouches, a revitalizing fluid, tubes to perform blood transfers, and instructions, one of which must happen every seven days, to transfer back to her older body. The part about every seven days is bolded and stressed in the instructions. After that, she would return for refills of the serums, nourishment pouches, and cycle between new self (Sue) and old self (Elizabeth).

Now begins a series of descending loops into eventual and predicted mutual or self-oblivion (the oft-repeated remonstration from the mysterious creator of the “substance” continues to remind Elizabeth/Sue, “you are one” whenever they call in a panic). Sue wants to stay younger longer than seven days. At first, it’s just an extra day. For this, Elizabeth “wakes” with an aged pinky finger.  Eventually, Sue decides to drain all of the rejuvenation out of her older self’s body, which takes three months. When her old body is drained of its rejuvenation fluids, panic mode ensues for Sue right before her big moment, emceeing a New Year’s Eve celebration for her network.

Elizabeth re-emerges as an ancient, gruesome monster akin to Lynch’s Elephant Man. She decides to opt out of the Substance program and picks up a ‘terminate’ syringe to administer to her younger self, who is lying unconscious on the floor. She administers the shot only to regret it immediately. She stumbles back to the bathroom to grab the blood transfer tube and plunges it directly into Sue’s heart (Pulp Fiction). Sue wakes up and takes note of the situation, and bludgeons Elizabeth almost to death. Yes, I guess this might be an outward expression of the anger against the aging process.

Things just spiral downward and so awkwardly that I felt embarrassed for the actors, the director, and anyone involved in making this awful movie.