How The Substance (2024) Uses Fantasy-Horror to Remind Us How Unrealistic Society’s Perception of Aging Women Is

When arthouse streaming service, MUBI, acquired one of the year’s surprisingly successful films, the Oscar-winning, The Substance (Coralie Fargeat, 2024), it was originally being distributed by Universal for barely $18M. However, French writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s refusal to cut certain scenes eventually allowed her to shop the film elsewhere. With Fargeat now satisfied and Universal likely banging their heads against the wall, The Substance has become an absolute hit, going on to make $70M+ at the global box office (D’Alessandro, 2024).

The guesses as to which scenes Universal wanted to cut are endless. That’s how bonkers The Substance is. The film makes an extremely bold, risky move by using elements of make-believe and horror to create a poignant message about the career death sentence of inevitably ageing in Hollywood and the absurd amount of pressure put on women to be ‘perfect’.

**Fig. 1 - Demi Moore as Elizabeth Sparkle in *The Substance* (2024).**

The Substance tells the story of faded, 80s Hollywood star, Elizabeth Sparkle (played by a phenomenal Demi Moore) who is sacked from her morning fitness show on her 50th birthday because she is now considered too old. After being slipped a card for a black-market drug meant to transform your life, Elizabeth gambles with the experimental elixir of youth offered to her (Fig. 1). Taking the drug rips Elizabeth’s back apart, knocks her out, and allows a much younger, ‘better’ version of Elizabeth to crawl out. This clone declares herself as Sue (played by Margaret Qualley) (Fig. 2). While Sue quickly fills the television vacancy Elizabeth has been banished from, the naked body of Elizabeth lies on the cold, ominous, white bathroom floor.

The catch (of many) to this magical drug: Sue and Elizabeth need to ‘switch’ what can only be referred to as a form of consciousness, every week. When Elizabeth is the one walking around, she suffers from low confidence and finds herself counting the days it is time to switch over to Sue.

**Fig. 2 - Margaret Qualley as Sue in *The Substance*.**

As Sue rises to fame and Elizabeth becomes something of a self-loathing hermit, Fargeat takes this time to paint Sue as eye candy that becomes appreciated for her youth, her beauty, her figure - and nothing more. She is the definition of perfect through the lens of the “traditional male gaze” (Mulvey, 1975). Sue becomes valued by the hoard of misogynist men running the show and is offered mountains of opportunities. However, these opportunities are restricted by Sue’s responsibility to abide by the safety precautions of the substance and to switch back to Elizabeth weekly. Soon enough, Sue becomes intoxicated by the addiction of being wanted and the empowerment of being a valued, materialistic asset.

Elizabeth and Sue’s co-existence is somewhat confusing at times, emphasised by the drug’s deadpan customer service line that they are one and “the balance between them must be respected”. Within Sue is undoubtedly Elizabeth; so undermined and undervalued by the industry that made her feel like the hottest thing out there a couple of decades ago that Sue, perhaps, feeds off these nostalgic feelings of accomplishment and satisfaction that Elizabeth no longer feels capable of emoting.

Sue begins going against the one-week rule as Elizabeth suffers the consequences. After a night out, Sue goes over the limit and when Elizabeth wakes up, her finger has become rotten. To her horrifying discovery: the damage is irreversible. Sue continues abusing the substance to stay in control; leading Elizabeth to age rapidly. She reaches her breaking point and decides to quit the drug. By ending the experience, she needs to terminate Sue. But with a gruelling mixture of both love and lust for Sue, Elizabeth tries to back out and everything goes wrong.

Sue goes ballistic and kills Elizabeth. But with her ‘source of energy’ murdered, a morbidly indifferent Sue physically begins to fall apart at the New Year’s television special she is about to host. In panic, Sue runs home and injects the leftovers of the fundamental first injection Elizabeth took to birth Sue.

The result? A deformed, grotesque monster with teeth on her shoulder, an extra face and…you get the idea. Think the Elephant Man, but 100x worse. She even has a title card that addresses her as ‘Monstro Elisasue’, as Sue and Elizabeth have LITERALLY become one.

According to Pierre Olivier Persin, the film’s lead special effects and make-up designer who recently won an Oscar for his work on the film, he was declared the best person for the job after submitting his blueprints for Monstro Eliasue which included the shocking teeth on shoulders, stray hairs sticking out and the random breast placements. As reported by The Independent, other monster creations presented to her were ‘too masculine’. “You can see it was done by a man”, she had said to Pierre. Simply because they all made Eliasue look like a hag (Butt, 2025).

Created through heavy prosthetics that was worn by a stunt double, who struggled with performing due to the physical demands the prosthetics bought, Elisaue was achieved with very little digital VFX input (Figs. 3-4). Fargeat was insistent on relying on as little VFX as possible and instead requesting Pierre and his team to create her vision through heavily on practical effects, puppets, and make-up (Verhoeven, 2024). VFX’s only role in the achievement of the film’s grotesque monster was to CGI Demi Moore’s actual face (with her mouth agape in an eerie, eternal state of silent screaming) sticking out of Eliasue’s back. “We sometimes disagreed”, Pierre told The Hollywood Reporter, “for the last stage, we understood each other.”

The last 30 minutes convey the film’s stunning message of tackling ageism and sexism through the portrayal of Monstro Elisasue, impulsively still attending the New Year’s Special, being heckled by men who call her a monster, who are so repulsed by her that they want her dead.

Whilst critics like Erik Kain of Forbes might say Fargeat went too far with her spellbinding climax (who based on his hatred for this film and his review of The Last of Us Part II, seems to genuinely hate entertainment), the fearlessness and, frankly, the audacity of this move is the reason why The Substance has proven so groundbreaking. While many critics like Miriam Balanescu of the BBC and Wendy Ide of The Guardian referred to the film as body horror, others like David Elrich of Indiewire have coined it as “an immensely, unstoppably, ecstatically, demented fairytale.” The substance is our magic potion and the misuse of it can easily be compared to disobeying the red button rule: to not open Pandora’s box (Fig. 5).

**Fig. 5 - Demi Moore as Elizabeth Sparkle in *The Substance*.**

The final transformation of our protagonist is the heart and soul of the film. The science of the substance is impossible, and the film’s message takes advantage of that. Fargeat intelligently uses the fantasy elements her film conveys to remind us how unrealistic beauty standards are for women everywhere and beyond, and what living in a society obsessed with appearance over reality does to an individual shattered by it.

The closest possibilities we have to Monstro Eliasue is perhaps the view of human bodies and faces ‘ruined’ by heavy plastic surgery or ‘losing themselves’ (having a piece of cake), a bat-shit crazy plot twist that offers us such a nauseating, out-of-this-world transformation begs to ask the question: how on earth is it realistic to expect women not to change as they grow older? Ironically, what about the substance of their immortal personality? This prompts the next question: what happens in the aftermath of telling these women they are, subjectively, no longer desirable and, therefore, useless?

We have only just entered an era where there has been a consistent flow of juicy, multi-layered roles being written for older women in Hollywood. Think of Feud: Capote vs the Swans, dominated by a female ensemble of veteran actresses all over 40 (Soloski, 2024). In the Ryan-Murphy produced limited series, socialites like Babe Paley (Naomi Watts), Slim Keith (Diane Lane), Lee Radziwill (Calista Flockhart) and C.Z Guest (Chloe Sevigny) facing middle age in 1960s/1970s New York City grapple with ageing, self-worth status and being confronted with the reality of their actions by their once G.B.F (Gay Best Friend), Truman Capote, when he writes the notorious Esquire article, La Côte Basque, 1965, exposing their infidelities and sins. Murphy chose actresses (whom he decided met the criteria of ‘icons who would be able to play icons’) who had experienced the nightmarish tabloids of the 90s where actresses’ weight was discussed in front of the entire world. He wanted women who were an example of those who had survived this they began to enter the period of their lives where they were warned that they may no longer be ‘castable’ in Hollywood.

But whilst Feud: Capote vs The Swans acts as a catalyst for liberating the actresses who are defying and going beyond the so-called curse of ‘ageing’ they would inevitably meet, Hollywood still has so much to overcome in how it perceives creating powerhouse roles for older actresses. The Substance wouldn’t garner the value it does.

The Substance’s choice to use a terrifying, sci-fi-like drug to prove the point of how absurd expectations are for ageing actresses could not make a greater, more creative point about Hollywood culture. When we speak about these issues, those who have not experienced such pressures, or heard the voices of those who have, cannot always relate on an emotional level to this toxic culture. But it may just take seeing an attractive, middle-aged woman who inflicts such drastic measures to her temple and her 20-something ‘spawn’ turn into an oozing sculpture of goo to realise what a ridiculous point we have reached in society. The idea of women even turning 30 has somehow become something of a misogynistic-marked milestone in many women's lives as some outgrow the ‘sexy baby doll type’ (as Coralie Fargeat describes Sue in the film’s online featurette) that men want them to be, forever. If they aren’t able to escape the inevitable, biological processes of ageing; it’s time to crumple them up, toss them in the bin and get a new replacement.

We have a film here that is not afraid to go past the limits. The Substance begs to question: how far are you willing to go to remain relevant, wanted and desired? In the complexity of The Substance’s ultimate obstacle; we are told the story of a washed-up Hollywood icon who has only ever been praised for being the young and sexy figure she once was. Once middle age hits, she is no longer valued. No one wants her. She hates herself. She isn’t treated like a human being. She’s treated like a disposable item with an estimated usage limit until it’s no longer effective.

Up until the point that Elizabeth is no longer human. Even though what Hollywood asks of women is not to be human, but to be perfect. They ask for fantasy so they get fantasy: but the fantasy is ugly. But to disgust them, their fantasy turns into a nightmare. And in this nightmare, they can see what obsession turns their victims into as they are told they are never enough. They’re never pretty enough. They’re never good enough.

Under the monster is a person, as Margaret Qualley’s blue eye stands out of Monstro Eliasue; reminding us of the human being under the monster melting flesh. We won’t get a monster of depression, self-loathing and hatred in real life. Well, at least not in physical form. Perhaps The Substance going so extreme has led us all as viewers to see the monsters within us in physical form.

And most importantly, to tell women; you’re not the only one - I feel like this too.

**Article published: March 7, 2025**

References

Butt, Maira. 2025. “Inside Demi Moore’s Oscar-nominated Substance transformation: 20,000 litres of ‘blood’ and 5 hours of make-up.” The Independent. January 27, 2025. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/demi-moore-the-substance-oscars-special-effects-b2685767.html.

D’Alessandro, Anthony. 2024. “‘The Substance’ Set To Soar Past $70M+: How MUBI Fueled Demi Moore’s Comeback At The Global Box Office.” Deadline. November 17, 2024. https://deadline.com/2024/11/the-substance-box-office-demi-moore-1236178368/.

Kain, Erik. 2025. “‘The Substance’ Review: A Genuinely Bad Horror Movie That Makes Absolutely No Sense. Forbes. January 18, 2025. https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2025/01/18/despite-rave-reviews-the-substance-is-actually-a-pretty-bad-movie/.

Mulvey, Laura. 1975. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16, no. 3 (Autumn): 6–18.

Soloski, Alexis. 2024. “The Women of ‘Feud: Capote vs. the Swans’ Are Birds of a Feather.” The New York Times. February 3, 2024. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/arts/television/feud-capote-vs-the-swans.html.

Verhoeven, Beatrice. 2024. “If You Thought Demi Moore’s Transformation Was Crazy in ‘The Substance,’ Wait Til You Hear How They Did It.” The Hollywood Reporter. November 17, 2024. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/demi-moore-the-substance-crazy-scenes-1236062561/.

Biography

Kearin Green (she/her) is a BA Film Production graduate from University of Portsmouth who was recently awarded the prize for Best Script in a Short Film at her graduation awards. She is an aspiring screenwriter who has been featured in Spyglass Magazine and the Making Waves Film Festival blog for her local reporting on all things cinema and film commentaries. If there’s a new European film out in cinemas about the most depressing situation in the world, she’s likely writing an article about it at this very second. Writing Portfolio: www.kearingreenwrites.co.uk. Letterboxd: @kdanigreen Instagram: @kearingreenwriterphotographer.