The Substance (2024)

Just like Titane did for Julia Ducournau in 2021, The Substance has been blowing up another female French director. Coralie Fargeat stormed into Cannes and took "Best Screenplay" for her satirical horror-comedy about an older movie star taking a mysterious substance that promises to return her to her youthful heyday. Not wanting to be behind the curve, this time I jumped on the opportunity to watch the film. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm was met with mostly boredom.

The Substance certainly will be provocative for most people, with its flashes of garish imagery and sensory attacking sound effects. It's chock full of squeamish bits where the practical effects can shine up close and in your face. This is the kind of film I would have loved when I was fifteen, which isn't the backhanded compliment it sounds. Fargeat has every right to make something for the gore-junkies and weirdos out there. Something brash and intentionally uncomfortable. It's just now my hunger has turned to stories, and ironically I found there to be a lacking of…substance, in that regard.

Throughout its two hour and twenty minute runtime I found myself treated like I was constantly missing the point of the film. Every single idea hammered in, called back upon, exaggerated visually and audibly so that I wouldn't forget. Horror scares me when it's unexpected, and it's not like The Substance doesn't have its unexpected moments. But there was so much redundancy to the point where I began to feel like I've seen some of this before. Films built to tear down the glitz and glamor of Hollywood, the consumerism of America, the "simple-minded" film goer. It's like the film is winking to its audience going, "Did you catch that? Do you get it?" except it's not a single wink it's a seizure.

There's only so many needles going into skin, so much blood to be shed, before I'm left wanting a strong skeleton left behind. That's when I turn to the characters, but really what's there to say about them? The satire of the film is that everyone is intentionally vapid, they react exactly how you think they would. So tell me, two hours and twenty minutes of being able to tell exactly what a character is feeling and what they're going to do next. Does that sound like a fun experience? It wasn't. The film was promptly turned off towards the end when my partner and I both had a pee break and felt little desire to finish the last ten minutes.

I later looked up the ending to see if I was missing anything, and I really wasn't. Somewhere in The Substance is a good horror flick but it's marred by some weird desire to produce a script longer than it should be. And I'm not in the headspace anymore to enjoy something like this for that length of time, especially not if it's going to treat me like the same people it critiques. Because of that, this sadly has been one of the biggest duds I've seen this year. I applaud Fargeat for making a critically regarded film that's this raunchy and loony, but if you want a better (and shorter) French female horror film I'll never not push 2016's Raw.