Coralie Fargeat’s second feature film “The Substance” is probably the wildest movie of this year in my trivial opinion. Deliberately shocking and excessive in many aspects, the movie pushes its weird and grotesque promise all the way for its dark horror and amusement, and you may gladly go along with that if you are really ready for wincing more than once during its rather long running time (141 minutes).

The early part of the film establishes how things have been quite desperate for an aging Hollywood actress named Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore). As cynically reflected by the extended opening sequence, there was a time when she was on the top of the Hollywood movie industry with many glories including her star on that famous spot in Hollywood, but, alas, her stardom has been going down into the past since that prime period of hers, and now she is desperately holding onto an aerobic TV show where she has worked as its host during last several years.

However, by coincidence, Elizabeth comes to learn that the producer of the show thinks she is too old for the show and is already considering replacing her with someone younger and prettier. She tries to persuade this sleazy bastard as much as possible (Dennis Quaid did a good job of chewing every scene of his in the film besides those shrimps, by the way), but it only becomes more apparent that there is no way for her to maintain her position, and she accordingly becomes all the more devastated.

And then there comes an unexpected opportunity. Not long after an unfortunate incident, she is approached by some young guy who gives her a sort of commercial video clip file for something called “the Substance”. At first, Elizabeth does not believe much what is promised to her, but then, as reminded again of how she will irreversibly get aged day by day, she eventually attempts to contact with whoever will provide her this mysterious drug.     

What follows next is the graphic depiction of how that drug works on Elizabeth. Once she injects it into her body in her bathroom, we get an intensely gross moment of body horror to be appreciated by any fan of David Cronenberg movies, and I must tell you that this is just the beginning of what the movie will show us along its increasingly disturbing story.

In the end, there eventually comes a new younger self out of Elizabeth’s old body, but, not so surprisingly, there is a big catch as warned to Elizabeth in advance. She and her younger self, who calls herself “Sue” (Margaret Qualley), must switch consciousness every 7 days, and one will also have to make sure that the other’s unconscious body is sustained by some special nutrient pack. In addition, Sue must be supplied with the “Stabilizer” day by day, which can incidentally be obtained from Elizabeth’s unconscious but living body.

For a while, everything goes pretty well for both Elizabeth and Sue. Sue is selected as the new host of Elizabeth’s TV show right from when she does the audition, and the producer cannot possibly be happier as the rating of the show goes up and up thanks to the youthful beauty of his new star. Although switching consciousness remains difficult for both Sue and Elizabeth, Sue later comes upon a rather clever idea, and we get a cheerfully preposterous moment as she embarks on her little project for both her and Elizabeth’s body.

Of course, as Sue becomes more and more prominent inside and outside her life, Elizabeth becomes more and more miserable while mostly being stuck in the apartment, but she cannot possibly give up her younger self, even when her younger self begins to cross the line more and more despite the warning from the supplier of that drug. The result of this continuing transgression turns out to be much more than Elizabeth ever imagined, and this consequently drives her into more despair and madness.

Although it spins its wheels to some degree as getting mired in more fleshy grotesque during the last act, the movie keeps pushing its outrageous story idea as before, and the result is one of the most insane moments I have ever watched during last several months. Somewhere between “Carrie” (1976), “The Fly” (1986), and “Dead Alive” (1992) with some possible influence from that hilariously bloody scene from “The Addams Family” (1991), this feels quite excessive to say the least, but it actually works in the context of story and character thanks to the skillful direction of Fargeat, who also served as the co-editor besides writing and co-producing the film.        

 As Fargeat and her cinematographer Benjamin Kračun fill the screen with a striking sense of warped reality from the beginning to the end, the movie is anchored well by the strong presence of its two lead actresses. Demi Moore, who was once one of the most prominent Hollywood star actresses many years ago, willingly throws herself into her character’s gradually deteriorating condition along the story, and her committed performance here in this film is certainly one of the highlights of this year. On the opposite, Margaret Qualley, who has been gradually advanced during last several years since her supporting turn in “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood” (2019), is equally effective as doing more than being the counterpart to her co-star, and she also has a fair share of intense moments as her character goes to the extreme just like Demi’s character. 

On the whole, “The Substance”, which won the Best Screenplay award when it was shown at the Cannes Film Festival early in this year, is another impressive work after Fargeat’s first feature film “Revenge” (2017). With these two unforgettable movies under her belt, she establishes herself as a major talent to watch, and I will certainly look forward to watching how she can provoke and then impress us more in the next time.