The Substance: The Terror of Defying Time

Nowadays, the fight against aging has become a global obsession, with its proponents following practices that seem straight out of science fiction. This is where The Substance, the new film by Coralie Fargeat, enters. This director offers a bold and stylized vision of feminism, machismo, and the desperate quest to defy time. At the heart of this story, the daring performances of Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley shine, taking the viewer to an uncomfortable yet fascinating place.

Demi Moore's performance is, without a doubt, top-notch. Courageously, she embodies Elisabeth Sparkle, a Jane Fonda-like celebrity who, on her birthday, receives devastating news: her age will be the reason for her dismissal from the television show she stars in. This scene echoes the fate of many public figures who, like the band Warrant in the '90s, realized that time waits for no one when their record label replaced their poster with one of Alice In Chains. With this performance, Moore could be facing one of the most memorable moments of her career.

Fargeat doesn’t fall behind with her visual and narrative approach. The Substance feels like a dark episode of Black Mirror, inspired by classics like The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Fargeat borrows from the best in cinema, paying homage to the cold perfection of Stanley Kubrick in The Shining, the visceral horror of David Cronenberg in The Fly, and the surreal poetry of David Lynch's The Elephant Man. The film even sprinkles a bit of the acidic humor from Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls, creating a mixture that defies any simple categorization.

The Substance is not just a horror movie or a fierce satire. It’s a deep exploration of vanity and human fear of aging, a reflection of what happens when we try to rewrite our own biological rules. The message is clear: the monster isn’t out there, waiting to hunt us down. The monster is inside us, in our minds, under our skin—another lesson from the master Cronenberg.

Fargeat draws heavily on Cronenberg’s teachings to show us that every artificial attempt to defy our own nature distances us from ourselves. It dissociates us. It turns us into what we fear the most: our worst enemy.

This is the kind of film that not only entertains but also stirs us to the core, forcing us to confront our deepest insecurities. In the end, The Substance is a film that transforms us and stays with us long after the credits roll—not just for its impeccable direction or powerful performances, but because it reminds us that the true battle against time is not fought with surgeries or creams, but with the acceptance of who we are and what inevitably awaits us one day.