The Substance
Director: Coralie Fargeat
Starring: Margaret Qualley, Demi Moore, Dennis Quaid
Genre: R grated
As a man in his 50s featuring all the normals for someone of my age – middle-age spread, tinnitus and going grey and bald to name a few – but still fit, physical, clever and switched-on to name even more, my attraction to The Substance was admittedly driven in large part by my attraction to 61-year-old Demi Moore. I approached the film not knowing what to expect, how I would rate it or Demi.
So now that I’ve watched The Substance, am I allowed to give it two ratings?
The first half of The Substance is fantastic. It’s deep and meaningful, tackles tricky gender, drug and age issues, has superb acting and totally appropriately uses full-frontal and behind nudity to emphasise all of the above. Demi Moore is at her best, Margaret Qualley establishes herself as an emerging superstar, Dennis Quaid is Dennis Quaid – that’s a good thing. Five stars rating.
The second half of The Substance is an absolute shlocker. Completely pointless and with nothing to add, it features a ridiculous monstrous costume and nonsensical scenes. Totally over the top, it loses every sense of reality and relevance. What was a drama became a shlock horror that was just horrible which oddly is pretty standard for all films of that genre. Zero star rating.
Never before have I seen a film that differs so much from the beginning to the end. Lots of films have unnecessary final scenes. But this is an extreme example. Whether the film is worth seeing or not is up to you. If all you care about is seeing Demi Moore naked then that’s fine – and that’s one of the main points of the film.
Rating: Two-and-a-half halves
