Cinema is a hell of a drug. For movie lovers, a trip to the pictures is just that, a two (or, increasingly, six) hour psychoactive escape from the drab outside world. The rushing highs, the crushing lows, the kaleidoscopic lights, the bombastic sounds; and that’s just the Pearl & Dean indent. But while cinema is also full of drugs – from 1894’s Chinese Opium Den right through to, er, 2023’s Cocaine Bear – film-makers have been coming up with fictional drugs (not available in the real world) to rewire narratives, change characters’ personalities and take audiences to brave new worlds without the need for goofy superpowers, confusing procedures or gimmicky magic.
Ironically, though, cinema’s phoney pharmaceuticals are used to highlight what’s happening in the real world, as film-makers are playing on our fears surrounding Big Pharma and synthetic drugs. Take The Substance, the new body horror from Coralie Fargeat, revolving around a drug of the same name that draws on recent weight-loss magic formulas and seems to have anticipated the Ozempic craze. Half Dorian Gray, half David Cronenberg, it begins with fading starlet and TV aerobics host Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) getting fired by sleazy exec Harvey (Dennis Quaid) for being too old. Giving into temptation, she orders a batch of the Substance from a shadowy firm and injects herself with a (suitably Brat green) fluid in her strangely empty bathroom. Suddenly, a nubile clone prises her shoulder blades apart and crawls out of her spine. Meet Sue (Margaret Qualley): Sparkle’s better, prettier half. There’s a catch, of course; she must switch between each body every week; take a “stabiliser” shot every day to stop her from getting sick; and continue feeding her other body. And side effects occur: namely, headaches, tinnitus and, oh, turning into a grotesque ogre with an amorphous amalgamation of flesh that would make Gollum grimace.
