Oscar Season: How The Substance Became an Unlikely Frontrunner

A feminist body horror hagsploitation flick is now an awards season darling

I saw The Substance at the Toronto International Film Festival. It was a press and industry screening, meaning it was closed to the public, and it was also completely full. This was something of a surprise to me because its general release was only a fortnight away and usually critics try to prioritize stuff without set release dates or something that won’t get to theatres for a few months. But we’d all heard about how wild The Substance was and we wanted to see if it lived up to the hype it had accrued at Cannes. Readers, it did.

(Image via Mubi.)

That screening was raucous. People were hooting and hollering like they were at a wrestling match. There was screaming, laughing, a bit of The Room-style hectoring. At one point, the woman behind me loudly declared, “Nope, I’m not watching that.” By the final act, the crowd was enraptured and glorying in Coralie Fargeat’s repulsion. It was there that I realized this film had the potential to go the distance, at least commercially. But it becoming an Oscar frontrunner? That was a pipedream.

As of the writing of this piece, The Substance has made about $56.7 million worldwide from a $17.5 million budget. It won the Midnight Madness People's Choice Award at TIFF and picked up a ton of titles over the festival season. Demi Moore has received Best Actress nominations from the Gotham Awards, the Independent Spirit Awards, the Golden Globes, and many critics circles. Fargeat is up for the Best Director Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award, facing more traditional movies like Conclave. We still don’t have a firm grasp on a frontrunner for Best Picture but we’re now in a fascinating place where The Substance landing, at the very least, a nomination in that category is highly likely.

To sum it up: a hyper melodramatic feminist body horror where a whole chicken drumstick is pulled out of Margaret Qualley’s navel is a legitimate and noble candidate for the biggest award in the American film industry. We are so back.

So, how did we get here?