The Substance Review: Demi Moore Makes a Scarily Good Horror Comeback

The Substance, a corrosively vicious horror satire with a career-resuscitating turn by Demi Moore, begins with an inspired if not very kind joke: You’re looking down the Hollywood Walk of Fame as a fresh, five-pointed plaque is being laid into the pavement.

It’s a polished marble testament to a beloved actress named Elisabeth Sparkle. Then years go by — Sparkle’s star is ignored, neglected, de-sparkled. Passersby step on it with no thought of the name beneath their hurrying feet. 

You probably couldn’t come up with a more stinging metaphor for how fame, for all its sensation and glitter, ultimately becomes a tombstone. Seen any Greta Garbo movies lately?

Elisabeth Sparkle, in short, is a has-been, and she’s played by a fearless Moore, who’s obviously up for a career gamble. Substance, directed by Coralie Fargeat, takes her into the undignified realm of schlock horror, otherwise known as the final resting place of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.

Yet, oddly enough, the film — an absurdly grotesque study of how women are pressured to preserve their youth at punishing, humiliating cost — is also a chance for Moore to prove herself at comedy. She succeeds. Her performance is an escalating howl of panic and desperation that’s also acidly sarcastic and ludicrously funny.

It’s possibly the best, if strangest, work of her long career.

Now middle-aged, Elisabeth has sunk down to a modest career plateau as the host of a morning exercise show. She appears to be close to physically flawless, but the boys in charge have decided she’s too old, so she’s sacked by a loathsome executive played by Dennis Quaid. A red-faced, sexist, boisterously loud brute dressed in an orange suit, he could be the manager of the Oompa Loompas. (And they would quit.)

Then Elisabeth, broken in spirit, gets a tip: She should look into a black-market experimental program, the Substance, which promises — in ominously vague terms — some kind of magical rejuvenation. She bites.

The Substance, it turns out, is a complicated protocol of injections that must be followed to the letter, even though the instructions are so confusingly minimal you might as well be assembling a DIY dining-room set. 

Elisabeth gives herself an injection — at which point her backside rips open like a cleaved ham. Out spills a completely different, smashingly attractive young woman (Margaret Qualley). According to the rules of the Substance, Elisabeth will now pass a week in deep slumber, fed intravenously, while Sue (as this creature calls herself ) is out in the world, having fun and being appreciated for her youthful beauty and zest. Then they’ll swap places.

But Sue, having taken over Elisabeth’s now-available TV job and savoring her own drive to stardom, disobeys the program, leaving her creator comatose on the floor of a closet. This has gruesome results for poor Elisabeth. First her index finger goes gray and dead, then… well, things get way worse, as Moore shrieks in anger and disgust. 

Ultimately the movie’s body horror goes too far (don’t forget to bring your fingers — your eyes will thank you). You might wonder why so little pity is shown for Elisabeth, whose only sin is to be shallow and want to keep her looks and career.

The movie, which ends on an incredibly cruel note of irony, could use more of the mournful empathy of director David Cronenberg’s best work, including The Fly.  When all is said, is there really that wide a difference between the ordinary and the grotesque?  

Still, Moore is pretty damned great — this could almost be her Fly. 

The Substance is in theaters now.