In the current year, 22-year-olds are getting 100 units of Botox and 12-year-olds are buying $60 anti-aging creams from Sephora. Our society is obsessed and resentful of the fact that women do get older. And despite the inevitability of time, many desperate women will subscribe to any trend to stop signs of aging.

This phenomenon is explored in Coralie Fargeat’s 2024 body horror, “The Substance.” An established TV fitness coach named Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) gets fired from her job on her 50th birthday for being “too old.” In an act of desperation, she takes an illicit substance that creates a “younger, more beautiful, and more perfect” body double (Margaret Qualley).

As Barbara Creed writes in “The Monstrous Feminine,” female horror will always center around female abjection: the gross, repulsive and biological realities of being a woman. Skin sags, we bleed and give birth, but men like TV executive Harvey (Dennis Quaid) can live in their messiness without any shame.

The abject is the backbone of Fargeat’s film. As Elisabeth goes through the requirements of the substance — switching bodies every seven days and feeding the collapsed body while it is comatose – we see an outpouring of pus and blood. Fargeat switches between the grotesque of the aging body to rebirth and the goriness of these treatments themselves. The latter is where Fargeat is most innovative and what I wish she would have focused on more.

The faceless voice behind the substance keeps reminding Elisabeth/Sue they are one person. But each body becomes resentful of the other, plotting against one another to try to make each other’s lives worse. It reminds me of when you look at old pictures of yourself, there is a distinct disconnect between who you are now and then.

Fargeat examines how we look at ourselves with the same abjection as society does. I don’t blame any woman who internalizes the chatter, but I do think the director may be a little too harsh with her characters. We only see Elisabeth and Sue as beautiful objects – we never really get any background into Elisabeth, save for a mention from an old high school classmate. Don’t get me wrong, Elisabeth trying to do her makeup is a heartbreaking scene. But we only get very surface-level knowledge of this character. But perhaps that is Fargeat’s point, women make themselves into these palatable, blank slates to move throughout society.

I was a little thrown off by the amount of body shots that were constantly thrust into our faces. It felt a little objectifying as the viewer but made me wonder how we all contribute to upholding these impossible standards for women. In fact, actress Demi Moore has faced her own accusations of being looks-obsessed, as many of her roles have been heavily sexualized. Rather, society simply discards the ‘old’ in favor of what is shiny and new. Even I treat Elisabeth/Sue like two different people because we are so ingrained to be attuned to appearance rather than substance.

There is no doubt that the film is beautifully shot, with the enviable apartment and even the grotesque body. Fargeat has a clear style that is incredibly palatable for our aesthetic-obsessed society. It is an interesting contrast, while the movie is so beautiful (and the body double Sue), the aging Elisabeth is so grotesque.

This movie was an incredibly interesting and shocking watch. Do I think that it was absolutely perfect? No. But I appreciate the inventiveness and the timely message of “The Substance.”