The Substance (2024) || Movie Review.

Artistic work always gets our attention as humans because we are easily drawn to colors, music, dance and art.

This movie was recommended to me by so many people and also movie lovers from Hive. I have read so many reviews here in the community and I said why wait. Let's watch this movie asap and see if my high expectations for this movie will be met.

”The Substance” is a satirical body horror film that was directed, written, co-produced and co-edited by Coralie Fargeat. It starred Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Gore Abrams, Robin Greer and many others that we may be familiar with.

The story of this movie revolves around a 50 year old woman, Elisabeth Sparkle who was also a once celebrated but now faded Hollywood movie star. Due to her old age, she was suddenly let go from her long-running aerobics TV show by the producer, Harvey. On her way home feeling crushed, she got into an accident because she was distracted by seeing one of her billboards being taken down.

At the hospital, she encountered a nurse who slipped a mysterious flash drive to her advertising a black market serum called ”The substance” that can be taken to create a young, more beautiful and perfect version of one's self. Desperate, Elisabeth orders the serum. Soon, she injects herself with the serum. The after effect reaction made her convulse as her body regenerated the younger and the perfect version, who emerged from a split in her back. Sue emerged.

For this process to go smoothly, the two bodies must switch consciousness every seven days respectively without any delay, while the inactive body remains unconscious and is fed with a weekly dose of food supply intravenously. For the younger version to stay alive and stabilized, daily injections of stabilizer fluid, extracted from the spine of the original body is required. Things began to go well until Sue decided that she needed more days to herself.

My Review And Rating

I see this movie as a controversial one. So many people think this movie is the best movie of the year while on the other hand a few people think the movie is not worthy of the hype and attention it's getting.

Well for me, this movie is not worth the hype it's getting. After I finished watching the movie I actually questioned myself what the movie was all about, what was the motive behind the plot, what purpose is the movie for, what message did it deliver and what is the moral lesson integrated into the storyline? My answer to all these questions came up negative except for the fact that the theme of greed was explored a little in this movie.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, we humans are always drawn by artistic work even if the work means nothing or has no value. That is the case of this movie. People enjoyed the visual layout, the music, artistic style of the storytelling and the design. Life is more than style and art atimes. That's why we can be easily controlled with art, music and beauty.

I feel this movie could have been better and be a strong thought-provoking movie that will be impactful and make people actually see the messages that are being delivered. Instead, it turned out to be a disgusting experience for me that dragged on for far too long.

The unnecessary elongated scenes of body horror, like teeth removal scene, the ear falling out, the eating scene, the chicken pulled out of the belly button, and finally, the third act where the substance experiment turns into a catastrophic failure. Also, elongated scenes of butts with music, what is the purpose? The movie focused on provoking disgust rather than telling a coherent or meaningful story.

Medically, some scenes were unrealistic. A major injury to the back can make one bleed to death, there is no surviving that and those types of injuries take weeks to heal with no major movements and extreme medical care. Let's not forget the poor stitching, sticking of the needle into the spine but no blood. Also, how Sue, who just emerged built a customized hidden room with heavy machines, the list goes on but I'll stop here.

The movie started well, but upon getting to the ending part everything began depleting and fell flat. For me, it turned into a gooey and disgusting splatter ending without any solid resolution.

One thing I find very clever with this movie is the fact that it pays homage to lots of classic old movies that we saw back then as just ordinary movies. Like the ”The Shining 1980”, ”2001: A Space Odyssey 1968”, ”Carrie, 1976”, ”Videodrome, 1983”, ”Psycho 1960”, ”Re-animator, 1985”, and ”Lost Highway, 1997”. If you have seen any of these movies, you know what I am talking about.

Rating this movie, I will give 4.9 out of 10 stars. It didn't stimulate me mentally, I had no idea what I was watching, and the motive behind it. Yes the visual out and cinematography was excellent and perfect, the movie itself lacked substance but was rich in style. It wasn't entertaining for me and I didn't enjoy it. If you are looking for a movie mentally stimulates you , this is not the one. It reminds me of how the movie ”Saltburn 2023” was overhyped last year.