The Substance

You might be the only person on the planet still thinking about that pile of shit movie.

I know I hate myself for it

I thought that same thing during the entire film, OP.

There was so much wrong with that film, although I thought the premise was great.

Someone—ostensibly a superfan—went HARD on writing the Wikipedia entry for this film, to the point of absolutely bloating it. There are subsections galore, including one entirely dedicated to the special effects design of Demi's aged finger.

[quote]R4 what’s in it for [Elisabeth]?Why does she agree and stick to this arrangement? She doesn’t get to be young. She doesn’t get her beauty back. She just loses half her life so that some younger clone of her can run around and have a hot girl life.

True. I didn’t even see the movie and I wondered that same thing.

I think she felt like the clone was an extension of herself and not a separate entity. Watching her clone get famous was better than living and dying in complete obscurity. It wasn't supposed to be a rational decision on her part.

That seems generous, R6.

She gets to put on a ratty, white fright wig, some bags under her eyes, and shake her saggy tits to a TV screen. Sounds like a winner to me!

First of all, OP, she doesn’t know the exact details of how it will play out. It’s a classic monkey’s paw, careful-what-you-wish-for tale.

Secondly, it’s not a “younger clone.” Remember the constant refrain when she signs up to take the substance: “You are one.” Elisabeth and Sue are two sides of the same person. R6 isn’t being generous, they’re correct.

Did you not understand Jekyll & Hyde, either?

Of course I do, r9 , but Jekyll And Hyde shared a body. In the substance they are 2 separate physical Entities.

They don’t have access to each others thoughts or experiences or memories- Demi doesn’t t receive any benefit of, for instance, moving through the world with a young hot bod. And experiencing life through a hot chicks eyes. Literally no benefit. At all. In fact she’s robbed of half of whatever time she has left to live.

If old Demi was like…. Living vicariously through the Margaret qualley character that would make sense , but she isn’t, she’s just asleep in the closet. There’s no indication that either has access to the others reality

I agree. The story had giant gaping holes. I also thought it was odd there was no background about The Substance. Where did it come from and what was it? An experiment? A badly established alternative to plastic surgery. A mad scientist? Notes with instructions to a locker with no explanation at all where it was actually coming from became grating by the end. The last act where she basically just turns into a creature was laughable.

R10, you’re still thinking of them as two people. They’re not. Demi doesn’t “have access” to Margaret’s memories because they’re the same person occupying two different bodies.

“Remember. You are one.”

I can’t tell if R11 is a parody post or not. Surely no one is this literal.

I believe r11, r13. There really are people who consume movies in that kind of joyless aspie way.

Now I'm starting to wonder if I understood the movie correctly. The way I thought was that it was the same consciousness in two different bodies. (For example, the Margaret Qualley character didn't become a schoolteacher - she did fitness videos because that is what she knew how to do.)

But by necessity, you would have to develop another persona - you obviously couldn't identify publicly as your old self. And then I think eventually you would develop resentment/anger at having to go back to the old ugly body every so often, and so things would progress from there as they did in the movie.

Ok r12 explain what being the same person occupying two different bodies means to you.

If I put Elizabeth and Sue in two different rooms, would each of them know what color the walls were painted in the both rooms?

Nothing in the screenplay indicated that they could and I contend that it would only be through a psychic connection that the procedure would bring any benefit to Elizabeth.

My understanding of their “oneness” simply meant that one could not live if the other died. Or that they were one in the sense that they shared the same dna

Either way it still doesn’t make sense.

You’re still talking about them as if they’re two different people, R16. They’re not. They’re two sides of the same consciousness.

For one thing, Sue knows how to get to the studio where Elisabeth’s show takes place. She knows how to get in and out of the apartment. She knows how to work the substance kit. They’re separate physical manifestations of one person. I don’t know how to express it any more clearly than that.

Look, it’s a metaphor—for ego, insecurity, addiction, etc. You either accept the metaphor or you don’t.

I thought the original version did experience life as the younger version.

Idiots, the younger self is not a clone. Its the same person, as in same soul or consciousness in some kind of physically impossible other body.

[quote]R17 Look, it’s a metaphor—for ego, insecurity, addiction, etc. You either accept the metaphor or you don’t.

I don't understand the metaphor, and I won't respond to it.

It was not clear to me that there was only one consciousness between the two of them. When Elizabeth wakes up she is surprised to see what sue has been up to

[quote]what’s in it for Demi Moore?

An Oscar nomination.

R21 it is a bit confusing because the two selves have increasingly different agendas but you have to go with it to get some of the other themes. Anyway, one is in suspended animation while the other is active, so of course they are surprised what the other gets up to.

To me there were 2 more confusing elements of the film.

1) When and where was a regular aerobics instructor EVER famous and had a show for decades? (No Jane Fonda was a famous actress who happened to do a tape). But aerobics instructor???

2) How is Margaret Qualley viewed as some extreme hot chick? She's pretty - but she's not all that in the film. And why did she look not even remotely like Demi?

It seemed so simple to just adjust the script to make it a bit more believable - like a woman who had a cosmetics contract or was a beauty host or something plausible? There are tons of more attractive women that could have played her double - who actually looked a lot more like her as well.

She looked attractive - but c'mon.

A movie based on sci fi medicine, extreme yet campy body horror, feminist theory, and Baudrillard's simulacrum, loses you because Margaret Qualley isn't pretty enough?

M'kay.

R25 - yes. Those were my stickler points - a famous aerobics instructor and a meh clone replacement? Easy plot holes to fix that would have helped the belief in the story.

If you can't get the basics right, then it's hard to follow down your sci-fi highway.

I did think the film was very good which is why it irked me that they couldn't rewrite that fame part or cast someone else. Aging model, aging showgirl, aging actress - really anything is more believable than an aerobics instructor.

Hell, Sydney Sweeney would have been a lot more believable in that role. And she has no problems flashing her tittays.

Sydney Sweeney has the face of a walrus.

R21, it’s played as if she’s woken up from a night of heavy drinking. Hence the addiction metaphor.

Well I'm gay so what do I know, other than 5 years in high fashion show production in NY, Paris and Milan. Margaret Qualley was both pretty and sexy in this - it's called acting - playing a pulpy post-lolita ambitious show biz starlet, a trope, and kind of Nomi Malone.

R27 - still better and more believable as a sexy woman everyone wants than Margaret Qualley in a ridiculous bubblegum-pink shiny leotard. I don't like Sydney - but she can play sexy.

"... the two selves have increasingly different agendas"

There's only one.

Having now done some research I am confident that my initial reaction was correct. No they do not share one consciousness. She does not wake up young one week and old the next. They are clone adjacent. Sue might have access to Elizabeth’s memories form before the split but neither have the ability to know or experience what the other one is doing, experiencing, thinking or feeling during their week in control.

At least Qualley can act, unlike her mother!

You’re still asking the wrong question, R32. The movie is about how our insecurities and compulsions cause us to tear ourselves apart. Obviously Sue develops her own agenda and starts trying to gain control over Elisabeth but she’s still PART of Elisabeth—a representation of those insecurities and compulsions.

[quote]what’s in it for Demi Moore? Why does she agree and stick to this arrangement?

You do realize Demi Moore is not the character in the movie?

I loved acts 1 & 2 and thought 3 was an unnecessary mess, and my partner thinks act 3 is what makes it great

Your partner is right, r36.

[quote] you’re still thinking of them as two people. They’re not. Demi doesn’t “have access” to Margaret’s memories because they’re the same person occupying two different bodies.

Then what’s the point? She’s basically giving birth for a kid she’s never actually around. It’s stupid.

Margaret Qualley is quite homely looking in reality.

r27, you made me cackle out loud.

I don't know why Elizabeth didn't let Sue just rot in that room- I may be disremembering, but she didn't need spinal fluid from Sue to survive, no? I also thought the 3rd act was ridiculous....they lost me at , "IT'S A MONSTERRRR!".

Dakota Johnson looks more like a younger Demi Moore.

The outrageous ending lands the critiques it has explored. I was shocked to be moved by the final 5 minutes on the sidewalk.

Now I'm imagining a Substance with Andie MacDowell in the Demi Moore role

I'm eagerly anticipating the Broadway musical version.

The third act was ridiculous but so was the whole movie. Everything was so ugly and surreal. Dennis Quaid looked like a rotting corpse.

I think Margaret is unconventionally attractive—not ugly at all, but also not your typical American beauty queen. She has an alluring, earthy beauty, and an offbeat personality that matches it.

The worst film I have seen in ages. I felt robbed of 141 minutes, though on the last half I read and solved all of the puzzles from the NYT and two other newspapers and otherwise tried to amuse myself as politely as I could while watching this disgusting mess play out in what would have been a wasted 16 minutes is a 1970s segment of Rid Sterling's Night Gallery.

I never liked Demi Moore (nor hated her), but the idea that this was some sort of message film or an important comeback for the actress. It was simply shit through and through, everything about it; there were no even slightly redeeming qualities to the film.

It was overexposed and overhyped which led to some backlash, but I thought this was a fun body horror movie. There were a lot of throwbacks to Brian Yuzna's gross-out flick "Society" (1989) and a whole bunch of others. Derivative? Yes. But, as a horror fan, I thought it was a good time. The themes were a bit beaten over the audience's head, I will admit. I did find the brutalization/murder scene of Demi's character quite of sad because it distilled just how much this woman hated herself. The film was not groundbreaking in the way that a lot of people seemed to think it was, but taken as a splatter flick set in a quasi-alternate universe, I think it was pretty good. I was entertained from start to finish.

R34 I’m fully cognizant of the larger points that were being made in the movie- that it can be read as a metaphor for our collective obsession with youth and beauty, being manipulated into self loathing by a hyper capitalist media culture that wants us to feel endlessly not enough so that we will Buy more, even the way that many of us already operate in a two-self reality, curating social media accounts to create an airbrushed online version of ourselves, while neglecting to nurture our actual irl selves.

I get all of this.

I do think it’s a plot omission not to give Elizabeth any tangible benefit from the experience.

I’m aging and feeling and seeing my youth fade. Sometimes it sucks and I’d love to have a solution but if someone said- “hey here’s the solution, you inject this green sauce into the your spine, and a hot young version of you will be born out of your back and he’ll be able to run around and be young and hot,living his best possible life, the way you wish you could be, but can’t. Oh and while he does that you have to sleep in the closet”

I mean… I just wouldn’t be interested. Why would AnYonE

I think it would have been absolutely possible to tweak the plot a little without losing any of the… uh… substance of the film, to make Elizabeth’s commitment to the process make a little more sense

R49 I don't get the impression that the Elisabeth character even knew all of the gory details of what using the substance would be. I think the point was that she was desperate, depressed, and made a rash decision on a promise to have a "better self," no questions asked. She got more than she bargained for and then some. In the end, it was a Faustian bargain. I think people are taking a lot of the elements of the movie far too literally—it's really a fairytale at the end of the day.

This is the future. The Under-45s will NOT get old. Their only identity is being young + hot. There will be meds, injections, fillers, facelifts, cloned body parts, hormones, etc.

The problem with that film is that it was hyped to death as "the courageous return of Demi Moore to the silver screen". In reality it was just another horror movie that starred an unlikely actress, and nothing else.

[quote]r52 = In reality it was just another horror movie

...that got an Oscar nomination for best picture.

Except, R52, Demi Moore is very good in the movie. And her performance is courageous in ways that are Hollywood hyperbole typically apply "courageous". And, she got much high recognition than she has in years.

So, truth in advertising. Not a problem at all.

Ugly? I thought the sets and art design were beautiful. I wanted her apartment.

No it wasn’t r52. It was smart, even with the potholes. Way more interesting than the dreck Hollywood keeps shitting out.

[quote]The problem with that film is that it was hyped to death as "the courageous return of Demi Moore to the silver screen". In reality it was just another horror movie that starred an unlikely actress, and nothing else.

Right, because Anora was some creative breath of fresh air.

[QUOTE] 1) When and where was a regular aerobics instructor EVER famous and had a show for decades? (No Jane Fonda was a famous actress who happened to do a tape). But aerobics instructor???

If you had watched more closely, you would have heard Dennis Quaid (as Harvey) responding the unseen person on the other end of his urinal cell phone call, to the fact that Elisabeth is a former Oscar winner (just like Fonda who partly inspired the character). “Oscar winner my ass! What did she win for - ‘King Kong’?”

Frankly, a lot of your questions could be answered if you just watched the film again and paid attention. Were you getting fucked the only other time you saw it?