Review: The Substance (2024)

Demi Moore earned her first Oscar nom for The Substance, and she deserves it. After all, she's a survivor of the Hollywood machine who delivers a brave and memorable performance. The film also serves as a showcase for Margaret Qualley, who blazes into courageous territory herself. 

But at some point, this potent cautionary tale from French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat turns into a bizarre splatter fest (not unlike Peter Jackson's Braindead, aka Dead Alive) that diminishes its message and dilutes its themes in a tidal wave of gore and blood that is so relentless that it becomes desensitizing and, dare I say, uninteresting. A film that started as a scalpel ends as a sledgehammer, bashing us over the head so aggressively that I went numb to it a good thirty minutes before it finally ended. If the goal was to create an endurance test, mission accomplished. There's value in that, at least in the short term. I appreciate and support the important things this movie has to say about how both Hollywood and society treats women as they age, but I can't help but wonder if these themes might have been more effective with just a modicum of restraint--something in which this darkly comic satire seems to have little interest.