The Substance

“Despite its supposed feminist credentials, The Substance doesn’t exactly walk the walk.”

Title: The Substance (2024)
Director: Coralie Fargeat 👩🏼🇺🇸
Writer: Coralie Fargeat 👩🏼🇺🇸

Reviewed by Monique Jones 👩🏾🇺🇸

—SPOILERS AHEAD—

Technical: 5/5

From the jump, The Substance grabs audiences by the throat, captivating them with a wordless scene of a scientist's hand injecting serum into an egg yolk. The yolk splits into two, establishing the world and its rules: Anyone who wants to relive their youth can buy a mysterious product called The Substance that allows you to grow a new body to live in every other week. But people using The Substance must flip-flop between living in their old and new bodies, or bad things will happen.

Over the course of the film, symbolism and subtext build up in layers, portraying a male-dominated world in which women are forced to reside. Beauty is Elizabeth's (Demi Moore) livelihood. For men like her chauvinistic boss Harvey (Dennis Quaid, going all in with this viscerally disgusting role), beauty is women's only currency.

If you quickly lose your lunch over blood and gore, I recommend watching without having eaten anything. The Substance delivers copious amounts of body horror and gross-out scenes alongside its images of shimmery, "perfect" bodies. But if that doesn’t faze you, The Substance smartly examines society's obsession with female youth, employing style and humor to memorable effect.

Gender: 3/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? NOPE

Despite its female perspective via writer-director Coralie Fargeat, and despite its supposed feminist credentials, The Substance doesn’t exactly walk the walk. For starters, the two women at the center of the film—Elizabeth and her offshoot, Sue (Margaret Qualley)—don't actually say much to each other. When they share scenes, one of them is usually, for all intents and purposes, dead. Their longest exchange comes late in the film, when Sue is beating the life out of Elizabeth.

On the one hand, this separation is by design, as the mysterious Substance requires that a person can only be in one body at a time. Through this allegory, Fargeat highlights the way that women are made to feel pitted against one another. In Elizabeth’s case, social inequalities such as pretty privilege, ageism, and skinny privilege, are the exact reasons Elizabeth hates her younger self, Sue.

By the same token, the two women have to depend on each other. Elizabeth needs Sue’s youthfulness to feel like she can advance in her career, and Sue knows she needs what Elizabeth’s body provides, such as Elizabeth’s spinal fluid, to survive without becoming chemically unstable. Their relationship does reflect the way sisterhood gets gutted by society’s impossible standards. But what ultimately remains in the movie is an empty, underdeveloped relationship between Elizabeth and Sue.

It would have been nice if Sue realized Elizabeth’s worth outside of supplying Sue’s physical needs. Vice versa, it would have been great for Elizabeth to understand her own worth and try to convince Sue that they’re more potent together than apart. Without some kind of onscreen reconciliation between its main women, Fargeat’s themes around sexism feel half-baked.

Race: 1.5/5

Aside from two Black dancers—one female, one male—who serve as part of Sue’s back-up dancers in her exercise program, The Substance ignores people of color. That doesn't make the film unwatchable, but it does perpetuate real-world issues when it comes to feminism and race.

Historically, white women have treated feminism as an ideology that only caters to them, while women of color—Black women in particular—have been kept out of feminist groups, such as the suffragette movement. The 2017 Women's March caught flak for the same issue, showing that not much has changed, despite intervening centuries.

The Substance continues this problematic approach to women’s rights. Sue's only Black woman back-up dancer is treated congenially, even going out with Sue and the other dancers for a night on the town. But we hardly see her face, and we never hear her speak. The woman's blithe happiness recalls the way in which white feminism ignores or recontextualizes Black experiences. We don't know whether this woman is satisfied with her life, or with how men treat her. We assume she's happy because she's young and beautiful. The film never never pauses to consider what it’s like for this dancer to live under white supremacy in a Black female body.

It’s clear that The Substance isn’t trying to cover female empowerment in a comprehensive way, and that’s fine. But given the historical context of white feminism, the film’s side-lining of women of color is excruciatingly loud.

Bonus for LGBTQ: +0.25

The film itself doesn't explicitly focus on LGBTQ characters or issues. However, it's easy to see how this film could quickly become part of the queer canon of cinema. By focusing on women's issues in a campy way, The Substance recalls Death Becomes Her (1992), a camp classic embraced by LGBTQ fans in which Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn’s characters, who want to retain their youth for fame and love, drink a potion that promises immortality and vitality. But they kill each other repeatedly in increasingly cartoonish ways, seeing each other as enemies.

Queer film reviewers have chimed in on The Substance’s subtext. Gay Times' Emily Cameron calls it an allegory for the trans experience, particularly "the joy of looking in the mirror and having changed your body in a way that makes you happier" as well as the "familiar swing of debilitating self-doubt of dysphoria." Additionally, Them.us writer Abby Monteil details a similar trans metaphor within the film, with Out.com's Dana Han-Klein adding that the focus on "impossible beauty standards" connects with women and gay male audiences alike.

Mediaversity Grade: C+ 3.25/5

Fargeat is one of several new female directors who are taking on feminist issues by using traditionally male visual cues like blood, gore, and violence. Along with other recent films like Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch (2024) and Mimi Cave’s Fresh (2022), The Substance boldly rejects the stereotype of women as dainty, fragile creatures.

Unfortunately, the film's narrow focus continues to privilege white women in the discussion around women’s liberation. The Substance doesn't try to be everything to everyone, nor should it be, but viewers might want to think about the women whose experiences are ignored in this film.

Like The Substance? Try these other titles that use a white feminist lens.

Grade: CLiFebruary 18, 2025Female/Nonbinary Creator, Great for: Technical