Slight spoilers for âThe Substanceâ ahead
The Substance (2024) is a sci-fi body horror film directed by Coralie Fargeat. It follows Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), an aging daytime television star who is unceremoniously fired by her chauvinistic producer on her 50th birthday. Soon after, she is introduced to a mysterious black-market drug known as âthe substance,â which promises to create a younger, more attractive version of oneself. Elisabeth takes the drug, but when she fails to follow its strict regimen, she begins to experience unwanted side effectsâ rapidly aging and losing herself in disturbing ways.
The film falls under the category of hagsploitation, a genre that revolves around an aged or aging female character, often appearing as an antagonist or anti-hero. The genre explores the culturally ingrained fear of aging and the loss of beauty, often portraying this loss as leading to a decline in morality, sanity, or sense of self. In many hagsploitation films, the âhagâ typically meets an unfortunate end, either punished for her attempts to preserve a facade of youth, or doomed when she abandons it. The Substance falls more into the former category, with Elisabeth meeting a gruesome end while attempting to regain her status by hosting a New Yearâs Eve special gone wrong.
The Substance is a film you need to sit with for a while to truly wrap your head around. Unfortunately, given the absolutely insane and grotesque nature of the visuals in this movie, I havenât been able to sit myself down for a rewatch. But even a year after watching it, I think about The Substance a lot. More specifically, I think about how one of my first instincts after watching the film was to compare my own appearance to Elisabethâs. Her deformed body served as an extreme cautionary tale of what could be and offered a quiet comfort that I havenât let myself go to that extent. This exact reaction is often cited as a critique for the hagsploitation genre itself, proposing that the shock value of the exploitative elements of hagsploitation films outweigh its attempts at social commentary. Witnessing the deformation and degradation of a female character through aging and loss of beauty triggers a base reaction of disgust or relief, rather than prompting deeper reflection on the cultural fears and biases the film is meant to critique.Â
This is why it becomes essential to approach films like The Substance with a critical lens. Our immediate, visceral reactionsâ whether disgust, relief, or even comfortâ are natural, but stopping at that surface level risks missing the deeper social commentary embedded in the narrative. In a way, dissecting our immediate reactions and feelings to a film is an integral part of the viewing experience. By pausing to interrogate why we feel the way we do, and what cultural assumptions those feelings reveal, we become a part of the film experience and further shape the impact of the film itself.Â
In fact, it is possible that The Substance was deliberately constructed to provoke this kind of comparison in its audience. By pushing Elisabethâs body to grotesque extremes, the film forces viewers to confront the uncomfortable truth of how easily we equate beauty with worthiness. The horror comes not only from Elisabethâs physical disintegration, but from the recognition that her downfall feels inevitable in a culture where a womanâs value is tethered so tightly to youth and appearance. When I found myself reassured by the thought that I hadnât âlet myself goâ as far as Elisabeth, it revealed exactly the cycle the film is critiquing: the impulse to measure ourselves against other women and to internalize the idea that beauty is the currency of dignity, power, and worthiness. Ultimately, The Substance is not just a horror film about one womanâs downfall but a mirror held up to the audience. The challenge is to move past the surface shock, to examine the discomfort it stirs within us, and to recognize that the real horror lies not in Elisabethâs disintegration, but in how easily we ostracize and otherize her.