Nina Paley

Outside is an icy hellscape so I’m staying in watching Oscar-nominated movies. Many of this years’s crop are crap, like Emeilia Pérez. But some are good, and The Substance is quite interesting to me specifically, so I’m writing about it.

If I had known The Substance was a horror movie (a genre I detest), I wouldn’t have watched it. So I’m glad I didn’t.

The plot follows Lizzie Sparkle (Demi Moore), an aging movie star losing her looks. A handsome young doctor slips a promotional USB drive about “The Substance” into her coat pocket. This contains an extremely brief and surreal video about a mysterious injection that generates “a better version of yourself.” The video explains: you only get every other week in this more beautiful, more perfect, younger body; equal time must be lived in the old one. “The one and only thing not to forget: YOU ARE ONE,” says a disembodied male voice. “You can’t escape from yourself.”

(The video, like the whole film, is pared down to essentials. Not a bit of excess information is offered. Lizzie’s apartment is a minimalist stage, the better to heighten the drama that’s about to occur. Lizzie’s work nemesis, played by Dennis Quaid, is a casual misogynist depicted in the broadest strokes, shot through a fisheye lens that renders him even more cartoony. Even names are minimal: a television show is simply called “The Show.” I’m a cartoonist, I like cartoons, and The Substance is cartoony in an effective way.)

Despite some initial hesitation, Lizzie goes for it and we get some creepy moments of “ACTIVATOR” injection, followed by an Alien-like back-bursting of the “Other Self” (Margaret Qualley). Fresh, young, and beautiful, Lizzie’s Other Self uses the supplied surgical materials to sew up Lizzies split back. She soon discovers what the “STABILIZER” kit is for: daily injections of spinal fluid from the “MATRIX” (Lizzie’s body) to prevent disintegration (represented by nosebleeds).

Once stabilized, Other Self wins the audition for Lizzie’s old gig as a TV fitness guru, and names herself Sue. Inside, Sue and Lizzie are the same person, but Lizzie’s old body lies unconscious on the bathroom floor, intravenously ingesting “FOOD MATRIX”. After a successful and fulfilling week, Sue/Lizzie opens the “SWITCH” kit and transfers her consciousness back into her old body. Life in the old body is boring, and Lizzie counts the days until she can once again be beautiful young Sue.

It’s not long before Sue starts abusing her old body, thus becoming a physical manifestation of self-loathing. She hates Lizzie’s sagging flesh and aged appearance, and starts taking it out on her vulnerable and unconscious body. Sue delays her weekly “switch” and sneaks an extra dose of spinal fluid “stabilizer” to have sex with some stud. Lizzie’s old body pays: upon regaining consciousness, she discovers her index finger has aged to death. Horrified, Lizzie calls The Substance service number. “I don’t know what she was thinking, and she was drunk…” she pleads, hoping the effects can be reversed.

“Remember there is no ‘she’ and ‘you’. You are one,” replies the disembodied male voice. “Respect the balance, and you won’t have any more inconveniences.” Click.

Balance is not respected, and never was, because Lizzie hates herself. In one painful scene she applies, wipes off, and reapplies makeup, desperate to look acceptable for a meaningless date she misses due to body dysmorphic obsession. That is why she created young, beautiful Sue, who is really an embodiment of her own self hatred. Animosity escalates to war, as each body leaves an ever-larger mess in the apartment for the other to clean up. Sue’s abuse accelerates Lizzie’s aging, like a Picture of Dorian Gray. But Sue needs Lizzie’s body to remain alive, as a source of precious “stabilizer.”

“It gets harder each time to remember that you still deserve to exist,” says the old man at a cafe after Lizzie picks up her weekly refill of The Substance food. “That this part of yourself is still worth something.” It is the old body of the handsome young doctor who lured Lizzie to the Substance in the first place. “Has she started yet? Eating away at you?” Lizzie drops cash for her unfinished coffee and runs away. Rushing home, she literally bumps into the handsome young stud Sue just slept with. He glares at her with contempt while Lizzie stares back behind sunglasses, realizing this man, who loves her Other Self, hates her.

The film does a good job showing the external pressures giving rise to Lizzie’s self hatred. Men lavish attention on the young and beautiful, while discarding the old. The Substance recalls 1992’s Death Becomes Her, in which vain aging women trade their souls for youthful appearance, but unlike its predecessor it extends some of the blame to the men and the world surrounding these women. Lizzie fails to love and accept her aging self because she has no models showing her how. She faces only external contempt and neglect, which she internalizes. As we watch her succumb to self-inflicted destruction, we wish for her only to become whole. Not beautiful. The Substance gives form to what we unleash when we hate ourselves as we are. For this, I appreciate its horror.

“Gross, old, fat. Disgusting!” Screams Sue as she drains Lizzie’s body of spinal fluid. She doesn’t care that she is completely dependent on Lizzie for survival. So it is with self-hatred; it’s part of us. Yet despite its contempt and abuse, we continue to feed it. Sue cannibalizes her life support for 3 months until no more stabilizer fluid is forthcoming. The disembodied voice on the phone states she has to switch to regenerate. By now of course Lizzie’s drained body is practically a corpse, and from there the film degenerates into conventional horror for conventional horror fans. The final act is bloody and ridiculous and adds nothing for a viewer like me.

But the first two thirds: wow.