It's been a banner year for feminist body horror, even if that only means there were two movies to fall into that niche. First, there was The Substance, an audacious, angry, stylish, and pointedly disgusting satire of on-screen aging, in which TV star Demi Moore uses a mysterious injection to transform herself into Margaret Qualley. This week, we got Nightbitch, a slight, strange parable about the loneliness and anxiety of modern motherhood, as told through a new mom who is slowly transforming into a dog.
It's hard to watch Nightbitch without thinking of The Substance, which was a bolder, riskier, more thoroughly realized production. Both films revolve around extensive body transformations that are meant as hit-you-over-the-head metaphors for aging. In The Substance, Moore's aging starlet first transforms into Qualley, who is younger, more screen-ready version of herself—but Qualley disobeys the rules that govern the transformation, keeping herself young for longer than the product allows, leading to both of them turning into horrific monsters. Directed by Coralie Fargeat, the film is set in a disorienting, not-quite-real version of Hollywood, and it's shot like a David Lynch fever dream, with an added cartoonish sensibility that recalls early Terry Gilliam.
