Tag: demi-moore

Your attention horror shoppers!

The Substance should be seen, full stop.

Nominated for five Oscars including best actress for Demi Moore? As it should be.

French writer-director Coralie Fargeat (Revenge) turns up the rage to Nova, and opens the taps at the blood bank in a body horror spectacle that will likely leave a bruise on your soul. It’s definitely worth the uncomfortable moments.

Fargeat gives us the impression that The Substance is another tale of dashed dreams in the Hollywood meat grinder, and it certainly is. In fact, the meat grinding has never been portrayed in such glaring and grotesque detail.

Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is a beloved fitness guru who has gotten too long in the tooth to pump up sponsor sales. She is unceremoniously dumped by the venal head of the network (Dennis Quaid), who announces his plan to find a younger model, while angrily taking a pee.

Fearing for her fading career, Sparkle takes a chance on a miracle rejuvenation drug called The Substance, which promises a “a younger, better version” of yourself.

Her decision to join the program, which includes a grumpy operator, a squalid post office box, hellish injection regimen, and the gradual draining of her own vitality, is the trap springing shut.

It’s only proper that a trouper like Demi Moore has enough presence and pathos to make her vainglorious plight extremely moving, as she’s forced to grapple with her younger, better self (Margaret Qualley) for limited consciousness.

Of course, things get worse, and by the time the finale rolls around, with a mutated star trying to host a live New Year’s Eve special, it’s a straight-up Frankenstein heartbreaker, with an angry mob in pursuit.

Each time Coralie Fargeat reaches a narrative turning point in The Substance, she amps up the gore to the point of anguish, and I admire that audaciousness in the telling of this particular story.

Fargeat never delivers half measures or wimps out in any way, and in Demi Moore she has the perfect vehicle to bring home a brutal point.

“Women are bloody,” my wife reminds me. “Birth, menstruation, it’s gross.”

I get the picture, and so will you.