The Substance, Coralie Fargeat’s outrageous new body-horror movie, ends the only way it can: in a great, explosive bloodbath. It’s a fantastic premise based on Fargeat’s very real fears.
“The idea came from living in my own life as being a woman past my 40s, going toward my 50s,” Fargeat tells Inverse. “I started to have those very violent thoughts that it was going to be the end of my life because I wouldn't be able to be valued as a young, sexy girl.”
“Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself?” reads the cooly seductive tagline for the Substance, the mysterious illicit drug that is offered to aging aerobics star Elisabeth Sparkles (Demi Moore). It’s a tantalizing promise, but a false one: the Substance only creates a younger double (played by a doe-eyed Margaret Qualley) that Elisabeth births from her own spine — a double that lives out the fabulous life of fame and fortune Elisabeth yearned for, while draining Elisabeth’s life force.
“I started to have those very violent thoughts that it was going to be the end of my life.”
It seems like a drastic reaction to getting older, but it’s one that Fargeat believes is a universal experience in a society that constantly places higher value on youth and beauty in women. It’s ridiculous, Fargeat acknowledges. Absurd, even. And it’s the dissonance of that reality that inspired Fargeat to make The Substance, her follow-up to her wild feminist revenge tale, Revenge.
“I wanted to address the violence and absurdity of those feelings, which are so powerful, so violent, and so vivid for many of us,” Fargeat says. “I decided to make a film about that, to try to free myself from this and try to shake the world, and to hopefully free the society from this as well.”
Inverse spoke with Fargeat about casting Demi Moore in the performance of a lifetime, her greatest body-horror inspirations, and that jaw-dropping, terrifically gory final act.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
You've spoken about how in your movies you like to “create other universes.” The Substance definitely exists in a different universe than our own. Why did you choose this sort of heightened alternate ‘80s world for your story?
In my films, I work with symbolism. I don't write a lot of dialogue. My way of expression is by crafting visual universes where the immersive experience is going to make you feel you’ve entered into the universe of the film.
This story can be true everywhere, in every place, for every woman, at any time. It was true in the past. It's true, unfortunately, today, and it will still be true for a bit of time in the future. I wanted to find the best symbolism that would represent that by mixing time elements so the audience could relate to them as well. That's why I wasn't interested in depicting the realism of the world. I wanted to create my own rules and codes so the audience unconsciously understands we're not in the real world. We are not in one specific place at one specific moment, but rather in a story that can be true universally.
Demi Moore's casting is brilliant for this reason. She's been a recognizable star for so long. Her arc from beautiful it girl to aging celebrity is somewhat similar to Elisabeth Sparkle. Was that intentional? And how did you get Demi Moore on board with this movie?
When I wrote the film, I knew the most powerful incarnation of this story would be to work with an iconic actress who represented what the movie is about. I knew it would be a challenge because it's basically trying to confront an actress with her own phobia. Not everyone is ready to do this, but I knew that if I managed to have a meeting with an actress who was willing, it could create something very powerful.
When I sent the script to Demi, she immediately reacted positively. I was very surprised because I didn’t think Demi was someone who would want to do that kind of project. But I said, "OK, we have nothing to lose. Let's send the script and we'll see."
“I was very surprised because I didn’t think Demi was someone who would want to do that kind of project.”
When we started to discuss and read her book, I discovered someone who has been taking risks in her own life. She had a very strong instinct and made her own choices, often out of the box, at a time when she had to work to make her place in the industry. She had also overcome a lot of personal difficulties in the past few years. She was in the process of getting in a good place with herself so she doesn't place all her value into other people's eyes. She had already gathered the kind of strength that allowed her to show vulnerability on screen.
This movie has been praised for its body horror and the way that it is unafraid to go hard with the gore. There have been comparisons to David Cronenberg, but did you draw from any other specific body horror movies?
There were so many filmmakers I grew up with that opened doors to imagination and great creativity. There is David Cronenberg, like you said. There is John Carpenter, there is Stanley Kubrick, there is Tim Burton, there is David Lynch, and Paul Verhoeven. There are so many. When I write, I welcome the homage I want to make to those filmmakers that I love and admire. I also welcome the more unconscious inspiration that feeds your brain and that you re-digest and make it your own. To me, that's what makes your voice.
I felt like The Substance also had dashes of hagsploitation, which is a horror genre that includes movies like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and Mommy Dearest. Were you aware of this genre? Did it inspire you at all?
I'm not so familiar with hagsploitation.
Hagsploitation is a horror subgenre that frames these older women as monsters. Because they're older, they're inherently evil. I feel like The Substance has a lot of that, but it’s almost reclaiming it in some ways.
Oh, that's super interesting. No, I didn't know about that. Again, I think I receive a lot of that in a very unconscious way. The world I grew up in was shaped around, “What was old, was evil.” The woman that was valued was the young, beautiful blonde princess. The other representations of women were old witches, monstrous old women. To me, it says a lot about how our brains, our culture, and our society have been built and shaped around those images and still fuel how society works.
I felt the need, in The Substance, to free myself from those representations, to show what it does to us, using satire to criticize the representation of the world saying to us, "If you are old, you are going to be worth nothing. You're going to be deformed, you're going to be evil, you're going to be..." It’s those thoughts that take life in the prosthetics.
