The Substance

Macrobetix – ”Actress Elizabeth Sparkle is attempting to come to terms with her ageing and how Hollywood treats her. After a car crash on her 50th birthday she is offered a substance to maintain her youth. The substance creates a duplicate version, only “younger, more beautiful, more perfect”. The only rule is that you must swap back every 7 days. But the draw to staying as her young self Sue starts to take over and she begins to break the 7 day rule more and more, with detrimental consequences to the original version of herself.

Demi Moore (Elizabeth Sparkle) and Margaret Qualley (Sue) are outstanding throughout. As the rule of 7 days is broken more and more by Sue, Elizabeth becomes more and more deformed and aged, with some fantastical vfx and physical acting by Moore, that harks back to the likes of The Fly, Elephant Man & The Thing. The film dives into themes around female beauty, youth, duality, social attitudes and eating disorders. The absolutely absurd and gratuitously violent ending I haven’t seen the likes of since Braindead. A brilliant, shocking and thoroughly entertaining film that raises the right questions in today’s world, all wrapped up in some classic body horror gruesomeness.”