warning: spoilers and grotesque body horror gif ahead
welcome to the 1st ever entry here on my horror shrine! glad you could make it 🎉
and how can we possibly kick off this brand new entry in my brand new shrine if we don't start off by raving abt what an absolutely incredible year 2024 has been for the horror genre as a whole? we've gotten so many kickass releases that i am more than happy to review later on down the line! but let's start right away with one of the most shocking and memorable releases to date for this year-- fuck it, more like this decade so far: The Substance.
my god. what a movie. in my humble opinion, i def do believe that it was worth all the hype it got. according to some news sources, this movie had the longest standing ovation of any movie that premiered at the cannes film festival this year and boy do i get it! i quickly bought tickets to see this a few months ago as of writing this entry, after hearing everyone ranting and raving abt it. i usually watch most movies using uh... alternative methods, but i knew i wouldn't regret sitting down at a theatre for a horror movie. esp one that had ppl buzzing as much as this one did!
turns out, i was right. i went in completely blind, sat in a mostly-empty theatre room since i opted to watch it after work on a wednesday evening (or tuesday idk i don't remember the specifics), and just... got lost in the movie.
there's a lot to get lost in, to be perfectly honest. from the minute the trailers and previews ended, the movie got right into the story with snappy editing and perfectly timed visuals that offered the setup of our completely bonkers plot moving forward.
i remember thinking to myself as i watched elizabeth sparkle's hollywood star crack and weather with age: "this is some amazing environmental storytelling, and they are not wasting our time". like at all. the minimal dialogue didn't deterr the delivery of any sort of information that we could need either. the movie was sparse with dialogues but the visuals and editing were so perfectly trimmed and placed, i actually didn't notice it much until we got to the part where elizabeth is cautiously making her way to the shady pickup location offered to her on a card she got from a handsome nurse who she met during a checkup at the hospital after her untimely car crash.
from the beginning, we get the idea that elizabeth is... washed out, a has-been. the days of her prime are behind her, even tho she was a p highly-revered actress and celebrity once upon a time. doesn't help that her creepy and boisterous boss invited her to watch him chow down nastily on 10lbs of shrimp at a restaurant, just so he can tell her she's old, boring, and that she's being fired from her 80's-esque aerobics exercise show.
which had me scratching my head at first ngl. i assumed with the passage of time-- as we watched sparkle's star slowly lose its sparkle-- that this was set during modern times. i found out later on that the mixing of eras in america coupled with the blatant bending of the laws of biology and reality was 100% intentional. i feel like as i was watching the movie i sort of let it go after a while. just the scene where elizabeth takes the substance for the 1st time almost knocked me off my seat and made me completely forget the laws of our boring reality p quickly lol
quick tangent but i fucking LOVE when movies are set in like a hyperreality a little bit apart from our own. sure, it's a universe that's similar enough to ours where we aren't completely lost, but the smaller details have you kinda quirking your head until you just shrug and think "fuck it, whatever". idk abt you guys, but i personally watch movies, read books and watch shows to escape our reality sometimes... not be constantly reminded of its limits.
so when i saw that elizabeth used an old fashioned rotary phone as well as her own iphone that she used to whine and complain to the poor HR guy every time her other half took more than her own fair share of spinal fluid (stabilizing fluid, in the movie), i was alllll for it.
we're watching a movie that's set in a reality where shady black market medicine pushes the boundaries of what we know is possible. let an old lady have an iphone and a rotary phone if she wants to ffs!
the rest of the movie goes about as well as one would expect a horror movie to go: elizabeth's own self hatred has her spiraling down, down, down into madness as she keeps breaking the "rules" set by the science company that keeps mailing her the kits she needs to continue to be able to live her life as sue (gif on the right)
it's a poignant commentary on america's obsession with youth and beauty: but the hollywood angle, to me, adds another layer that will probably always make this movie evergreen. not that fame and fortune didn't exist before hollywood became a thing, but that the concept of celebrity isn't one that we'll be able to escape anytime soon.
as long as we live in materialistic and shallow society that raises glitz and glamour-- and most importantly, youth-- as the pinnacle of human achievement, it's a death spiral we're never gonna be able to get away from. in a lot of ways, The Substance is a deep jab at late stage capitalism.
yeah yeah yeah. i know. mars ranting abt capitalism, what else is new lol
but listen. hear me out for a sec. i don't think that it's a coincidence that lately, america seems to be hyperfixating on the 80's. there are a lot of nods to the era that birthed the shopping mall in The Substance, joined by other modern smash hits like Stranger Things, VHS 85, Fear Street, Totally Killer, Summer of 84, the modern remake of IT, Mandy, and countless others.
in a lot of america's mainstream consciousness, this era is where this country stopped slowly slipping down into decay and started racing for it full-throttle. swathes of land that could have been used for housing and recreational areas got turned into seas of concrete for big ugly parking lots surrounding these malls. which is the biggest monument we have to late stage capitalism til this day, and the one that we all as a country have collectively abandoned over the years.
to say that the social experiments that thousands of ppl have started in the 20th century for much of north america have utterly failed humanity would be an understatement. we're still suffering from the ripple effects of the hundreds of racist, harmful and outdated policies that our govts put in place back then. you could look at the history of the usa as a whole and predict that we'd be right where we're at right now tho, but the harm that hyperconsumption and materialism has wrought on humanity went global, and our ecological impact on this planet will bring down everyone on it, not just usamericans. not entirely sure that that's something many ppl actively think about in this country, at least not on a daily basis.
and who is often the target of hyperconsumerist advertisements, trends, habits and lifestyles? that's right, young people. the teens. the 20-somethings who are lost in life trying to search for their own identities and places in this vast, scary world. out went community and in came shopping, shopping, shopping!
capitalism knew that 1. young ppl are highly susceptible to being influenced and therefore vulnerable to insecurity and 2. young ppl had their parent's money to spend. grandma is on the last legs of her long life and won't see any use in buying lycra leggings or a shiny brand new phone. but Young Sally and Youthful Fred were the perfect victims to pounce on to get them to try expensive diets, shell out coins for trendy new clothes that they didn't need, and try to go on vacations they knew they couldn't afford. everyone knows capitalism manufactures problems in order to get ppl to buy things they don't need, but the younger demographic is often its main victim due to naivete, insecurity, and inexperience.
so what's another symptom of this kind of behavior implemented and encouraged by so many marketing teams, so many shareholders, movie directors, athletes, celebrities, etc?
that Youth Is King.
don't get me wrong, old ppl have been coveting youth since humans learned how to walk on two feet hundreds of thousands of years ago. it's just the name of the game when you're a mortal being subject to the cruel passage of time. duh.
but the economic system that we're all enslaved under takes the concept of being soft, supple, strong, fast, unburdened by the weight of age and elevates it to heights previously unknown. not only do old ppl "get uglier" as they age (many old ppl lovers will beg to differ; beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all) but they get so much more useless too! /s
that's just me saying that with age comes creaking joints and aching muscles. saggy skin, slower reflexes, waning elasticity and failing eyesight/hearing (or both!)
and those are simply not gonna do when there's so much labor to perform for your lazy and incompetent boss who's living off of the wealth that you produce for them! duh, of course!
it wasn't lost on me that elizabeth was fired from her show that she was highly successful at for a number of years, forgotten about and cast aside as if she never even existed and therefore never mattered-- only to be replaced very quickly by the younger and more bouncy sue. and yeah, that's her name. just sue. i noticed that along with the super clean editing of this movie that we as an audience are never given any more details or info than we need. fine by me, more room to ponder the message of the movie
and what a message it is! elizabeth breaks the rules that the flash cards that came in her substance kit tell her. before long, sue is siphoning off way more than she should off of elizabeth's aging and decrepit body all so she can continue to live her dreams as a hot young aerobic exercise show star. i mean, why wouldn't she? before, she was living as an older woman, still beautiful and active but still so very miserable as society as a whole casts her aside simply for the crime of being older. as sue, this woman can go back to what she knows and keep living out her dreams of fame and fortune.
she gets it all as sue; the attention from hot guys, the money that tv stars earn to fund their lavish lifestyles, the adoration and acceptance she needs as a person. i don't blame her for wanting to drain her aging body of all the spinal fluid it has just to keep living in bliss.
and ain't that a bitch? elizabeth's ridiculously grand apartment is more or less what you'd expect a former celebrity to be living in, but it's dark. and it is cavernous. and it is empty. elizabeth-- from what we can see-- has no family living with her. no friends. she never leaves her apartment as elizabeth to go socialize, she only leaves to pick up food refills from the shady pickup location that the science company delivers to her preassigned mailbox. she never interacts with anyone a single time except for when it's strictly necessary. she's alone. she's isolated. just by design
at one point, an old highschool classmate tries to invite her out on a date and she ends up standing him up bc her own insecurities abt her age chains her to her bedroom. it's a sad but painfully relatable portrait of a deeply insecure and self-hating woman unable to escape a prison she's always going to be trapped in.
a prison that many, many ppl find themselves trapped in whether they like it or not.
capitalism preys on ppl of all ages, but it especially loves to deny older folks any sort of integrity, dignity or sense of community. it really does depend on the person, but most folks don't come into much contact with older ppl in their day-to-day lives. blame a lack of third spaces accessible to a mix of many ppl from diff age groups in this country, but there's a reason why many middle-aged ppl go thru their own crises: this country doesn't offer any gold medals for the aging population. you're retired and you have no friends? good luck, buddy. your kids are too busy keeping up with the rat race of the country your generation helped mold, they're going to stick you straight into a smelly nursing home the second you can't get up to use the toilet by yourself.
elizabeth herself is a specific case of the brutality of hollywood, fame and the media machine. you could argue that she has no friends bc in order to get to the top, you've got to step on some backs every now and then. but where she ends up regardless of how famous she is isn't so alien to your average old person. just ask them
perhaps there's a reason why america is so fixated on aging and getting old (and the inevitable decay of materialism that ramped up in the 80's) now more than ever. after all, this movie was p much directly inspired by a number of other horror movies that already exist, including Death Becomes Her (which isn't actually a horror movie but... well i think it counts lol). like i said, the concept of mortality and all of its horrors isn't anything new to the human consciousness, but in a world where ads trying to sell you things that you don't need clog up our roads, tv screens, soc media feeds, radios, computers, podcasts, and every other nook and cranny of our life, it isn't hard to connect the dots. and i feel like this movie will def be upheld as one of the keystones of our media landscape during these trying times.
look around and any number of complaints anyone could ever have abt american society nowadays can always somehow be traced back to capitalism and imperialism. we're living in some p precarious times now, smack dab in the middle of history in the making. our deeply inefficient and destructive systems that we forged for hundreds of years is now collapsing under the weight of its endless failures, and just like Monstro Elizasue (gif on the right), it will all just fall into a giant bloody heap of flesh, tits, and eyeballs, drowning everything that's trapped with it.
... well, that was my review of the movie!
needless to say, i LOVE it. i think it'll be one of those instant timeless classics and i am so unbelievably overjoyed that i can say i was present for it, just for bragging rights in the future LOL
i think ppl will be talkin abt this movie for many years to come, even if it does eventually fall into a bit of obscurity for a while before resurfacing as a cult classic again. like i said, we're living in some... interesting times. ppl will no doubt look back on the media that we consume now for answers as to how it could've all gone so wrong! ppl will probably also study the collapse of the usa the same way we study the fall of the roman empire today, and i imagine this movie will be referenced by future scholars as part of their curriculums and courses (assuming we don't somehow manage to wipe all of the media we make now in some digital y2k-esque library of alexandria event in the future ofc)
i gotta say, as a feminist movie, it simply fuckin rocks. forget barbie, that movie was for chumps and little girls. as usual, horror comes to the rescue and hits you over the head with the most poignant and deeply visceral fears and worries you can have, just to teach you a lesson. 2024 made this horror lover proud, and i can say with confidence that i absolutely can't wait for what the future brings in the genre
as far as makeup, costuming, prosthetics and practical effects go, The Substance absolutely delivered! 10/10
demi moore and margaret qualley played their parts absolutely perfectly, no notes there. all of the actors did their damn thing but demi and margaret shone like the stars they always were. their roles in particular required so much raw emotion and vulnerability and they pulled it all off so perfectly. they juggled scenes that were ridiculous, put into high-emotion or euphoric situations but also scenes that were brutal, raw, taxing, depressing and downright disgusting. this movie does it all. demi and margaret rose to the occasion, and that's an understatement.
listen. as an avid horror movie lover myself, i've been watching stuff like this since i was a kid. i've blinked through the goriest and most brutal scenes in horror movies and seen grotesqueries beyond what most normal ppl can usually handle. but lemme tell ya, that scene with the chicken thigh and the belly button... yeah, that scene... yeah, that was p much the only scene in recent memory that had me deadass squirming in my seat. not only does this movie convey a powerful message, but it had me-- some chump who's long desensitised to this kinda stuff-- covering my eyes like a scared lil kid LMFAO
so if this review doesn't have you queueing this movie up (if you haven't watched it already), then let me just tell you outright: WATCH THIS FUCKIN MOVIE!
doesn't matter if you're a horror hater, you've just gotta. there are some movies you simply have to watch and i would definitely add this to the very long list that's already out there. sit down with a group of friends or your family and immerse yourself in 141 minutes of pure shock and awe
and when you're done, don't forget:
thx for reading!
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