The Substance may be grotesque, but it is not body horror

Elisabeth Sparkles (Demi Moore) has just turned 50 when she is fired from her hosting job by the producer (Dennis Quaid) of a televised aerobics show. Elisabeth, like so many aging stars before her, is being forced into obscurity by a shallow industry that refuses to look past her aging body. But for the rich and famous there is always another option. Elisabeth is offered a new piece of biotechnology, which allows her to live out her youth once more. Or at least split herself in two and share her life with a younger model who can live the life she is being denied. And so begins The Substance, Coralie Fargeat's sophomore feature film, that has already been granted the moniker body horror, due its visceral imagery and mutations of the body (read our interview with Pierre-Olivier Persin about creating the prosthetic make-up for The Substance).

After Elisabeth injects the neon green liquid, she convulses on the bathroom floor, from her splitting spine emerges her younger self, Sue (Margaret Qualley). Wet with bodily fluids she stands in front of the mirror and marvels at her supple flesh, her perky bottom, her full lips. Here is where Coralie Fargeat’s problem begins, although her intention is to critique the ageism of the industry, she forgets that the camera holds no irony. What follows are many lingering shots of Sue, where her body is ogled by the camera. In one scene Sue wears a tight leather catsuit and Margaret Qualley’s curves balloon like a Jeff Koons, under an objectifying lens. While Elisabeth – despite Demi Moore’s obvious beauty – only receives cold hard angles.

The Substance may be a grotesque piece of horror, but not every gory addition to the genre falls into the category of body horror. When, inevitably, Sue abuses the substance, repercussions are visible on Elisabeth’s body: her finger bulges and wrinkles beyond her years. Repulsed by the crone-like appendage she scrubs desperately at the digit hoping to return her hand to its former glory.

In body horror, discomfort around the body is a prerequisite: Adrien (Agathe Rouselle) denies her half-human half-car pregnancy even as her stomach swells (Titane, 2021), Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) struggles to accept the new organ growing inside him struggling against his own rapid evolution (Crimes of the Future, 2022) and body swapping assassin Tasya Vos (Andrea Risebourgh) reckons with the split from her physicality while revelling in the sexual pleasure of the Colin’s body (Christopher Abbott) that she inhabits (Possessor, 2020). Suffice to say alongside the dysmorphic horror they all experience, there are moments of sensual pleasure at their changing physicality. One which queries gender limitations and offers visceral and erotic possibilities, beyond the binary. But for Elisabeth, there is no revelry, only disgust, having internalised the misogyny of her industry.

Body horror is much more than just manipulated gore designed to evoke disgust, in fact it contains a curiosity about the body that differs from horror's usual rubbernecking. Despite attempts at a critique on ageism, Fargeat’s abject treatment of the body and reliance on hagsploitation clichés, alongside a lack of interiority for Elisabeth or Sue – who spend their days in front of the TV or seeking male attention – makes for a vacuous depiction of womanhood.

The Substance should be stripped of the body horror title so many have awarded the film, as it lacks the fascination with what lies beneath the flesh. Thanks to body horror's long history of in depth experimentation with physicality, we have come to expect a committed questioning of gender that is exactly what The Substance lacks. It is merely a vacuous depiction of Hollywood that only succeeds in replicating stereotypes it claims to question.

The Substance is at cinemas nationwide from 20 September 2024