The SubstanceReview: Demi Moore Makes a Scarily Good Horror Comeback

Mar. 15, 2025

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You probably couldn’t come up with a more stinging metaphor for how fame, for all its sensation and glitter, ultimately becomes a tombstone. Seen any Greta Garbo movies lately?

Yet, oddly enough, the film — an absurdly grotesque study of how women are pressured to preserve their youth at punishing, humiliating cost — is also a chance for Moore to prove herself at comedy. She succeeds. Her performance is an escalating howl of panic and desperation that’s also acidly sarcastic and ludicrously funny.

It’s possibly the best, if strangest, work of her long career.

Then Elisabeth, broken in spirit, gets a tip: She should look into a black-market experimental program, the Substance, which promises — in ominously vague terms — some kind of magical rejuvenation. She bites.

The Substance, it turns out, is a complicated protocol of injections that must be followed to the letter, even though the instructions are so confusingly minimal you might as well be assembling a DIY dining-room set.

Elisabeth gives herself an injection — at which point her backside rips open like a cleaved ham. Out spills a completely different, smashingly attractive young woman(Margaret Qualley). According to the rules of the Substance, Elisabeth will now pass a week in deep slumber, fed intravenously, while Sue (as this creature calls herself ) is out in the world, having fun and being appreciated for her youthful beauty and zest. Then they’ll swap places.

Margaret Qualley as Moore’s gorgeous but mischievous reboot.MUBI

MUBI

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Ultimately the movie’s body horror goes too far (don’t forget to bring your fingers — your eyes will thank you). You might wonder why so little pity is shown for Elisabeth, whose only sin is to be shallow and want to keep her looks and career.

The movie, which ends on an incredibly cruel note of irony, could use more of the mournful empathy of director David Cronenberg’s best work, includingThe Fly.When all is said, is there really that wide a difference between the ordinary and the grotesque?

Still, Moore is pretty damned great — this could almost be herFly.

The Substanceis in theaters now.

source: people.com