TIFF 2024: The Substance (and Some Thoughts on Demi Moore)

Live from Toronto: This body horror is gross, hilarious, and as deep as a puddle.

It’s TIFF time! I’m currently in Toronto for its annual film festival. This is my fifth time here and I truly love it. This is one of the best parts of my job, getting to go 3000 miles across the Atlantic to live, eat, sleep, and breathe movies. I’m currently writing on my hotel bed while watching the Paralympics after my first full day at TIFF. I’ve seen five films so far, the reviews for which you can find on Pajiba.com. This one, however, is all for you guys. 

It’s not easy being a woman in the entertainment world. As Goldie Hawn famously declared in The First Wives Club, ‘There are only three ages for women in Hollywood: Babe, District Attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy.’ So spare a thought for poor Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), a former movie star who reinvented herself as a fitness guru when she became grandma age to the film world. After being fired on her 50th birthday for getting ‘too old’, she becomes desperate. That’s when she is gifted something, a USB drive with a promotional video that offers her a miracle: a chance to return to a younger, hotter, ‘better’ version of herself. The substance creates Sue (Margaret Qualley), the Elisabeth of her prime. Now, she can get back on top. Or one of them can. If they don't switch back every seven days, the consequences could be disgusting.

French director Coralie Fargeat’s sophomore film made quite a splash when it premiered at Cannes earlier this year. Body horror is not a natural fit for the world’s most glamorous film festival, but it became that movie. Despite having a theatrical release only a couple of weeks away, the press screening at TIFF was full and the vibes were off the charts. Certainly, my crowd was with it, bordering on Midnight Madness levels of rowdy (but not quite, we are professionals, after all.) 

I laughed a lot. For the final third of this 140-minute frenzy, I cackled like a hyena. I had been promised grotesqueries and I got it, and I hadn't been able to predict any of it. So, job well done, right?

I have thoughts. But first, the positive. Get Demi Moore that Oscar nomination, Mubi! 

Moore’s presence is one of the sharpest pieces of meta-casting I’ve seen in a film in years. Few actresses have ever reached her level of fame and become so inextricably connected to the public discourse around beauty, ageing, and how women are meant to ‘acceptably’ approach both. Her body was the subject of cultural vivisection for decades, whether it was her pregnancy photoshoot for Vanity Fair, the grandma gags she faced when she married Ashton Kutcher at the decrepit age of 40, or being dismissed as nothing but a hot bod when she earned record-breaking paychecks. In her excellent memoir, Inside Out, Moore talks about the terror she felt over getting naked for Indecent Proposal and how exhaustively she worked out to feel comfortable with her clothes off, only for director Adrian Lyne to scream that she was now so skinny that she ‘looked like a f*cking man.’ 

I have strangely clear memories of the wall-to-wall press coverage that surrounded Moore when she made her early 2000s ‘comeback’ in Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. When it wasn’t focused on Kutcher, it was barely veiled gawking at her body and listing the alleged plastic surgeries she’d undergone to prepare for her return to the spotlight. For some reason, I always remember the claim that she’d had a knee lift to make them look less saggy. I also remember how Moore’s efforts were both fetishized and seen as a symbol of old lady desperation, much like the ways that Madonna getting buff for the Confessions on a Dancefloor era of her career led to misogynistic insults and claims she’d ‘ruined’ herself. You just couldn’t win.

So, seeing Moore play this woman who looks at herself with such disgust even though she’s so beautiful and done everything she was supposed to in order to appease patriarchy is especially pointed. But don’t give all the credit to the context. Moore is excellent here. It might be her greatest performance. She has always been a far better actress than she was ever given credit for in her commercial heyday. Ghost does not work without her bitter heartache. In G.I. Jane, she excels as a woman forced to shed her femininity to survive the misogynistic brutality of the Marines. In more recent years, she's found a niche with esoteric indies like Please Baby Please that allow her to play around with camp and high drama gender.

There’s a lot of that film in The Substance, which is a wholly silly affair, and that gives Moore room to let loose. A lot of reviews use terms like “brave” and “gives it her all” in describing how unhinged Moore gets. They’re not inaccurate, per se, but it feels somewhat condescending. Oh wow, the 61-year-old woman did all of that? Bravery! But also, this is a risky performance. You need to buy that Moore is desperate enough to do something this dangerous, and you do. 

Moore’s boss is a repugnant TV executive who is somewhere between Andrew Tate and that lecherous wolf from Tex Avery’s cartoons. Dennis Quaid practically gives himself a hernia hamming it up. The way he sucks at a bowl of prawns while he lectures Elisabeth on being past her prime is a level of unsubtle grotesquery that wouldn’t feel out of place in an early John Waters flick. He thinks Elisabeth is a hag, never mind that he’s wrinkly and yellow-teethed and has the table manners of a pig. The rules don’t apply to him. So, when Sue walks in and looks like his idea of the perfect woman (young, pretty, no other qualities required), he goes nuts. So does Elisabeth’s former audience, as her cute workout show becomes a gyrating sweat-filled excuse for sex gawking at half-naked bodies. It’s ridiculous to imagine what is essentially the ‘Call on Me’ music video becoming the hottest show on TV but The Substance doesn’t operate by real-world rules: this is Hollywood, as seen through the most cynical lens possible. 

But how far can parody really take you? The Substance is daft. It’s supposed to be. Its body horror and “I know writers who use subtext and they’re all cowards” approach has no time for nuance. There’s merit in that. Why treat society’s abhorrent misogyny and impossible beauty standards as anything other than a sick joke? There’s such a wide chasm separating the Hollywood dream and what it’s like to live in it. I’m sure I’m not the only one who watched this and thought of Ozempic and its many reported side effects (one scene where evidence of Elisabeth’s binging shows up on Sue’s body made me dry heave with that idea.) 

Maybe unsubtle ideas don’t need subtle satire? Nothing here is finely drawn. It’s a jackhammer of prosthetics, screaming, and gonzo grime. Had it not premiered at Cannes, it probably would have been easier to discuss as a classic and often very satisfying horror film. But it’s now getting genuine Oscar buzz, so its shallowness feels less excusable. Elisabeth’s obsession with youth and her downfall as she loses it all need more than the same ideas we’ve been hearing since Sunset Boulevard. It’s hilarious to watch as she mutates into one of the most impressive pieces of make-up I’ve seen in a film since Society, but you yearn for it to be for a bigger idea. For better or worse, The Substance is Demi Moore’s hagsploitation flick.

The Substance will premiere on September 20th.