Is it weird to be writing about horror movies as we head into the New Year? It was below freezing when I woke up this morning, the top of my living room bookshelf is crowded with colorful Christmas cards, my neighbor has Christmas ornaments hanging from the actual trees in her front yard, and I just watched somebody walking by the window in my front room with a dog dressed in a red and white Santa suit sweater. We’re smack dab in the middle of the holidays folks, so why do I insist on writing about psychos, slashers, and slimy spooks?
Holiday season is also when the movie award season hype train leaves the station. I’ve been getting links to screeners in my email and movie studio swag in my actual mailbox since just after Halloween. This is also the time of year when we see studios releasing their most epic, star-studded fare, hoping to make a fresh impression in the minds of Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences members just in time for their upcoming Oscar voting. And 2024 has been a big year for horror films: Maxxine brought Ti West’s X Trilogy to a screaming end; Immaculate gave us the best final film frame of 2024; Late Night with the Devil broke streaming records on the Shudder platform; and The Substance is the first horror movie since Hereditary that might actually win some little gold men in March.
The Substance is set in a near-future, fictional Los Angeles. The architecture might have come straight from the story boards of Dune 2, but its aerobic exercise television shows and no sign of the internet also make the movie feel dipped in the cheesy-sleek commercialism of the 1980s. It’s all rather disorienting, and that’s the point. The Substance is a movie about appearances and surfaces, and it’s also about the entertainment industry’s zero-sum limits on imperfect beauty and natural aging. Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is a former movie star whose now turning 50. She’s fit and beautiful, but nobody is sending her scripts and her day job is a television exercise program that’s a fun reference to Jane Fonda’s pivot from Barbarella to body sculpting. When she’s unceremoniously fired by Harvey (Dennis Quaid), the show’s producer, she winds up in a hospital where she’s secretly given a flash drive and a phone number that lead Elisabeth to a second chance at youth, beauty and the spotlight.
The Substance reminded me a lot of the classic short story, “The Monkey’s Paw” — it’s a wish tale fraught with unintended consequences. This movie strikes a bonkers balance between gruesome and gross, sensational body horror and a satirical tone that borders on the hysterical. It’s a picture that features some of the most queasy-making effects of the year, but the over-the-top characterizations and unreal locations are almost as unsettling as all the squishing viscera. Moore and Margaret Qualley play Elisabeth/Sue with a grounded realism that keeps viewers fully submerged in the unreal story-verse of The Substance. Ray Liotta was going to play Harvey before the Goodfellas’ star’s untimely death. I’d have loved to have seen his version, but it’s hard to imagine anybody but Quaid in his scene-stealing role.
The Substance is a movie about Hollywood. The Academy Awards love those. It’s also a movie written and directed by a woman — Coralie Fargeat. And it addresses the experiences of women in the entertainment industry. The movie scores diversity points, but never panders or peddles activism. It’s a genuinely entertaining blend of horror and science fiction, comedy, tragedy and gallons of bodily fluids. It terrified Cannes audiences into a standing ovation and a Best Screenplay award, and it killed at the box office. Aren’t you just dying to see The Substance win an Oscar?
The Substance is streaming on Mubi
Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.