Sixteen Further Screams For Halloween: Day 7 (The Substance)

 Boy howdy, sometimes you just get blown away by a motion picture. That happened with me this afternoon watching The Substance. I went in expecting "something something body horror picture", and by God did I get that in spades. There is much of the body horror to be had, grotesque morphings of the human form and lots of ichor and orifices and bloody stuff. You will not be disappointed in that respect should you choose to view The Substance. What's shocking is the "something something" at the heart of it all: it isn't just set dressing to get you to the gross shit. No, it has some actual (and I do apologize) substance behind it, and some actual complex and heady layers to delve into. It requires a little bit of good faith and active imagination to really plunge in; not so much as, say, a David Lynch picture, but an amount certainly. That's what I've been spending not just the run time of the film, but the hours since, doing. So. Here we go. What's going on in between the lines here?

Oh baby it's unrealistic beauty standards being held to women and the way they age. Misogyny all the way down, leading to this unfair pressure heaped upon poor Demi Moore in the picture, leading to this intense self-loathing of her own body, leading to her taking The Substance. I'm not going with it beyond this bit, but there's almost a trans energy in the initial transformation and birthing of Elisabeth's other self Sue. This woman who loathes her own body injects herself with some stuff, this other self emerges from her quite literally and stares at herself in the mirror. Nude. Beautiful. Imperiously female. A true self. Fuck, wouldn't that be nice? That sort of reading does not survive the movie, but let's revel in that nice little sentiment for a bit. Okay, so on any logical level this is a horrible deal for Elisabeth. She gets to have a back ouchie, sit at home for a week and do nothing, and constantly be at risk of the other half of her taking too much of their shared time; it's always her who pays the price forward, never Sue until the end. In exchange for this she doesn't seem to get anything, really, except the satisfaction of knowing an aspect of her is young and beautiful and famous. At first I thought it was a transhumanist shared consciousness thing, but it doesn't seem that way; each half acts surprised at the state the other has left the apartment in when they first wake up for their week. You didn't find the fountain of youth, you just splintered part of yourself off to be successful while you mope about and it can steal what little beauty you have left for their own self-interest. What a shitty deal.

Ah, but after a little thought and conversation with my pal Joe, another reading presents itself. I'm sure there are many, it's that kind of film, but let's go with that. The movie repeatedly stresses that Elisabeth and Sue are one and the same. Two halves of one whole, dependent on each other. One going out and having all this fun, and the other paying the price. It's all right there, laid out before you. Sue is not using the stuff properly: she is abusing The Substance. The messy apartment, the trash and bad eating, Elisabeth unable to remember what Sue was doing and mocking it while also suffering the bodily consequences... This is a metaphor for substance abuse, born out of a deep self-loathing due to body issues. They may be one, but they're equally fucked up in distinct ways thanks to our goddamned society. Even society itself in the movie is hyper-exaggerated: there is no way the biggest show on TV is a goddamn 80's style aerobics program. It's all there to put bombast to the idea of men gawking at women: both Elisabeth and Sue's exercise shows exist for two purposes: to give men something to gawk at, and to pressure women to those same body standards. Both halves are stuck in this cycle of pain and anguish, and there's only one way for it to end.

The climax of this film is jaw-dropping, laugh out loud ridiculous, disgustingly lurid, and tragically poignant all at once. It's heart-rending and grotesque, the final exaggerated parody of this element of show business put on display. The masses see a true representation of the person Elisabeth and Sue are deep inside, scream KILL THE MONSTER and immediately go to violent murder. Anything less than fit aerobics babes, and this is what modern society wants to do. It's horrific. It's tragic. It's fucking cinema, and I'm here to tell you that. Part of me laments that there isn't a more utopic version of this concept, something that leans more into gender... but that wasn't the story being told here. Maybe one day some filmmaker will, but this film being a downer is by design. It's still great, and we will leave it there.