The Substance

I have many thoughts about this film, and I don't really have the time to put it all together into one coherent whole, but an incoherent whole is also what the film also gave us, so I don't mind mirroring it.

This film is three movies in a trench coat—one per act.

The First Act

The first act was about beauty standards. The entertainment industry. The youth-consuming machine. The brutality of every content-creation business. It makes you viscerally associate disgust and revulsion with the circumstances that The Protagonist finds herself in.

It's all true, it's all widely known, it's all been done before.

This act was also a trojan horse, because the next act shifts from social commentary to...

The Second Act

... commentary on the Self.

It's about a human, whose relationship with their many selves each with its own desires, is cause for a constant tug-of-war. They make this abundantly clear with a scene making clear that all shooting schedules will be accommodated around Sue's every-alternate-week availability. Any lack of balance is entirely Self-Inflicted.

It's about the Self and the Self alone.

It's about her.

It's about you.

The you who wants to be the best version of yourself, and the you that sabotages your body, your soul, your mind, and what you can be (or want to be).

If you struggle with alcohol, it's about the alcoholic in you, and the tearful regret the next morning.

If you have an eating disorder, it's about the gorger (or starver) in you, and the you that aches to do better.

If you are a revenge procrastinator, it's about the late nights, and the next day, when you curse yourself for not doing better.

Every day that you do not stay active and take care of your body, you take a day from yourself in old age.

What's been taken can't be given back.

Both those people are you. Tonight and tomorrow morning. In youth and in old age. You and she/he/they are the same. And yet, you sabotage yourself.



A little bit of temporary suffering today could save you a lot of permanent damage.



You could stop The Substance Abuse, but you can't. You choose to make the You of tomorrow suffer instead. Till you die...

... which is how this film could've ended, but they had room for another movie in there.

The Third Act

Avid cinema-goers know that the third act (more generally in media, the ending) is where a lot of stories fall apart. It's a natural consequence of the creation process.

Creation often begins with an evocative idea, and growing from there is natural and progressive. But a satisfying ending requires you to have two evocative ideas with a convincing progression that connects the two seamlessly.

It's very, very difficult.

Some of the best stories are those that have their genesis in an ending, and they grow backwards from there to a beginning. People are a lot more forgiving about beginnings. All's well that ends well.

This wasn't one of those stories.

The ending was The Thing, Planet Terror, Kill Bill, The Colour Out of Space. It was Camp. It was an entirely different genre of story.

It was, at least to me, pretty clearly about taking you on a roller-coaster ride that requires you to suspend disbelief so it can take you to an ending that happens to wrap back to the cold open with the Walk of Fame Star, which in retrospect was obviously construed entirely for the sake of the ending. It had little other purpose.

Personally, I enjoyed it, and I think I was meant to. It was an interesting way to side-step the problem of "how to have a satisfying ending". Like ending a three-course meal with a joyride for dessert.

It was a fun film, but I will never watch it again.