Knee-jerk review: "The Substance"

1. We've been trying to limit these "knee jerk" posts solely to theatrical releases we see in a darkened theater, but, more and more, Hollywood makes distribution deals with streamers that limits traditional releases just long enough to make movies eligible for awards.  We had to rent this one from something called Mubi even though Demi Moore just won a high profile Golden Globes award for her performance.  
2. We hate streamers.  Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Disney+... they all ruined Hollywood with the lure of quick bucks that in the end has completely undermined the box office model for movies and the syndication/rerun model for television and, along with it, killed most of the traditional entertainment economy in Southern California.
3. So here's the deal with The Substance.  The first 3/4 is mostly a masterpiece of unsettled dread, queasy satire, and icky body horror about the absurd lengths women go to in chasing youth and popularity because of cruel social pressures.
4. We won't spoil how exactly this all plays out.  There's a black market experimental drug that does something to Demi Moore's character.  That's all you need to know.
5. We learned after the fact that the writer-director is French, which makes sense.  This is a movie with a dark, cynical European sensibility.  And a lot of full frontal female nudity that an uptight American director would never dare include.
6. What also makes sense is that the director apparently calls David Cronenberg and David Lynch among her inspirations.  If you know anything about those two filmmakers, then you know what kind of movie The Substance is.  Everything's a little off and weird like Lynch - it looks like our world, but it's a generic sort of simulacrum.  And then things also get gross and squeamish like Cronenberg - bodies are abused and mutated and transformed in gross ways.
7. To offer an example for how this movie is Lynchian, two locations feature ridiculously long narrow hallways that are completely impractical and totally weird.  But the characters treat them as perfectly ordinary.
8. It's that last 30 minutes or so that really spoils the whole thing.  Our best comparison is Danny Boyle's sci-fi movie Sunshine (2007), which we found to be a brilliant and masterful movie for the first 90 minutes before the wheels totally came off in the last act.  With The Substance, writer-director Coralie Fargeat goes way over the top for ending, then decides to go even further in pushing her premise to extremes.  Audacious without a doubt.  But also completely off-putting.  Which, admittedly, is probably her point.
9. Not much dialogue, really.  This is a very visual movie.  The art direction is top notch.
10. And considering it's a movie about Hollywood and show business, the cast is pretty small too.  There's a claustrophobic, lonely vibe to it all that works.
11. The horror elements of the movie are getting all the attention, but the most powerful sequence comes when we see Demi Moore struggle with debilitating anxiety and self-doubt as she prepares to go on a date.  As objectively beautiful as she may seem, she only sees an old ugly woman in the mirror.  It's tragic.
12. Dennis Quaid chewing the scenery.  Good for him.
13. If a scary organization tells you that the weird drug they supplied you is for a single use only, believe them.
14. We are suckers for movies like this about secret underground companies with hidden entrances and mysterious leadership.  One of our favorite movies is The Parallax View, which features a secret company that recruits assasins.  Other favorites: The Game which offers customized experiences for the wealthy, and Old which involves an unethical clandestine lab seeking medical cures.  Another variation of this is the entire community (complete with rules and bureaucracies) of killers in the John Wick universe.
15. The yellow coat is a symbol for an egg yolk, right?
16. "What has been used on one side, is lost on the other side. There's no going back."  Scary.
17. Special recognition to the opening sequence that uses a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to chart the familiar rise and fall of the lead character.  Brilliant.
18. Demi Moore probably deserved that Golden Globe.

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