Vanity Unfair

One thing The Substance is not, is subtle. It shouts it's themes loudly. It bathes the viewers eyeballs with beauty and then assaults them with grotesque body horror of the highest order. It infests the ears with horrible squelching, popping and cracking. It's quite an experience.

Demi Moore plays Oscar winning actress Elizabeth Sparkle, who now hosts a daytime yoga show produced by odious TV exec Dennis Quad. Deemed over the hill on her fiftieth birthday (despite looking like Demi Moore) and let go she turns to a shady procedure that involves injecting herself with "The Substance". This births the young and pristine Sue (Margaret Qualley) who picks up where Elizabeth thinks her life should be, becoming her own replacement on TV. The problem is, the two halves need to share, with each being awake for seven days at a time and like feeding your Mogwai after midnight, there are extreme consequences to not respecting the balance.

The Substance is a high saturation parable set in a showbiz world with the volume cranked up. The rules of science do not apply here, with the substance itself representing a deal with the devil more than anything else. It's a feminine story, but not really a feminist one. Quad is disgusting and every other male is lecherous, predatory or pathetic (often all three) but they only have power because Elizabeth/Sue is so desperate for their approval. The focus is on internalised misogyny, the resentments women can harbour to each other and the damage they inflict on themselves in the never ending battle for fleeting adulation. The phrase, "your own worst enemy", has never been more appropriate.

At its heart the film may have a simple message of enjoy the life you have but the way it shows you is anything but. The body horror on display is some of the most inventive in decades; wince inducing, thematically powerful and just slightly hilarious. The sound design is, if anything, even more uncomfortable. Every snap, tear and thud will have you gritting your teeth and it all sounds so horribly wet. You wouldn't think watching someone eat prawns could be an endurance test.

It's cliche to call performances like Moore puts in here "brave" but she certainly leaves it all on the line, both physically and emotionally (the hardest to watch scene doesn't involve body horror at all, just a women crippled by her own imagined inadequacies). The meta casting of her as a woman desperate to stay young and beautiful isn't lost on her but she gives a powerhouse turn, reminding everyone she is one of Hollywood's most underrated performers. Qualley is very much in the secondary role but she dazzles as walking Diet Coke commercial Sue. Hollywood producers will be pleased she already has a good body of work so over the next couple of years they can pretend they aren't casting her after seeing the film she is a sex object in.

The gnarly visuals and general ickiness will mean The Substance isn't for everyone and the deliriously over the top finale goes on a little too long but anyone with even an inkling to check this film out should do so. The effects work is a tour de force, there's a career best performance from Demi Moore and a declaration from director Coralie Fargeat that previous movie Revenge was merely a warm up.

9 full vials of stabiliser out of 10.

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