November 2024

Body horror in The Substance18 Images As Sue (Margaret Qualley) is plunging a needle into an infected wound, consumed by a single-minded pursuit of perfection and unable to stop herself, despite it destroying what’s left of Elisabeth’s (Demi Moore) body and life, it becomes clear she is hooked on chasing beauty and ‘fixing’ her every imagined flaw. Coralie Fargeat’s satirical body horror film The Substance follows Elisabeth’s journey as she experiments with an unregulated injectable drug that guarantees to make her a “younger, more beautiful, more perfect” version of herself. As Elisabeth is shoved out, Sue is ushered in, and while, at first, the 2 uphold the foundations, soon the characters’ actions spiral uncontrolled, starting to exhibit classic signs of substance dependency...