Public media counts on your support to ensure that the reporting and programs you depend on thrive. So start supporting what you love today at PLUS. dot npr dot org. The Substance is a bloody, campy, fiercely feminist, and completely bonzo, banana pants, body horror film. Demi Moore plays a TV aerobics instructor who's fired when she turns 50.
Desperate to stay in the spotlight, she avails herself of a black market drug, a substance that births from her body a younger, entirely separate version of herself very squelchily. The movies earned Demi Moore her first Oscar nomination, and she's the frontrunner in this year's Oscars Best Actress race. So we thought it would be the perfect time to revisit our conversation about the movie.
I'm Aisha Harris. And I'm Glenn Weldon. And today in this encore episode of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, we're revisiting our conversation about the substance. Valentine's Day is on the horizon and NPR's All Songs Considered has you covered with a mix of lesser known love songs for that special someone in your life. You don't make your wife playlist? Well, not anymore.
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Wow. The Substance stars Demi Moore as Elizabeth, an actress turned TV aerobics instructor who's fired from her job by her cartoonishly sexist boss, played by Dennis Quaid. She learns of a mysterious drug she can inject that causes another young... entirely separate version of herself to sort of violently splurt out of her back and assume her consciousness. This version names herself Sue. She's played by Margaret Qualley.
But whenever Sue is out and about living large in these streets, Elizabeth's body lies dormant and vice versa. They must switch back and forth every seven days without exception, or some very bad and bloody and spurty things will happen. Guess what happens? The Substance is directed by French director Coralie Farge. It's her second film after the bloody revenge film Caldwell.
Revenge. It is in theaters now. Now look, this movie doesn't have a twist per se, but what it does have is one hell of an ending. And hoo boy, do we want to talk about that. So we'll start with general thoughts and give you plenty of warning. when we're about ready to go all in on how this movie wraps up. But Aisha, you wrote the NPR review, a great review. Tell me about this movie. Look, Glenn, subtlety...
It's overrated. That could be the tagline for this movie. Some movies are meant to be all about plot. They're meant to be about... deep lore, narratives, all that thing. And some movies, like The Substance, are meant to be visceral, tactile, fully immersive experiences. And, you know, there are moments...
where I think it goes further than I want it to. And the point is like there from the very beginning up until the very end. And I, you know, this movie is about two and a half hours, a little less than that. Around the two hour mark, I was like... I think I got the point. But overall, I just admire how audacious this film is. And, you know, subtlety is not the point. And I appreciate that. What are your thoughts? Well, I mean, what did I text you as soon as I walked out of?
this theater. Do you remember what I texted you? Oh, no, I don't remember. It was like one word. No, it was hoot. And a half, which is a term of art that we critics reserve for films that are hoots and a halves. I said Camp Classic. I said Baby Jane 2024. Oh, yeah. Baby Jane with a special effects budget. This film is an angry film. Oh, it's very angry. Yeah, and it has the courage of its convictions. It's angry but funny.
But Demi Moore goes all in. This film would not work if she didn't. Talk to me about Demi. You said Baby Jane. It is definitely giving late period Bette Davis. It totally is. It is also giving, you know, Mommy Dearest, Faye Dunaway, No More Why. except like add in lots of food because this movie is not just about body parts but it's also about relationships to the body and food and there's something funny about demi moore who is you know in her early 60s
playing a 50-year-old who is ousted, which to me says a lot about how we perceive womanhood, especially in Hollywood. And I think it's interesting because in the real world, she does not look her age or how we expect. someone her age to look like. But of course, like we think of someone like Demi Moore or even, you know, J. Lo, Halle Berry. They are these ideals of hotness, you know.
It's because they don't look their age. And so I think when you think about those layers and what Moore is doing here, fully committing, but also it's just like at the same time. Look at the way you look. And those are unrealistic expectations of like what we think we're supposed to look like. I think she's great. And I think that, like you said, we need her to commit.
And she goes full-throated. These are not like well-written characters. And I don't mean that as a slight. We don't know really anything about these characters. So it really calls upon her and Margaret Qualley to really... Give the vibe. Give what Farja is doing here. And I think they deliver. They do. And I want to pick up on two things you just said. First of all, the thinness of these characterizations. This movie won Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival. And it's not because...
There's a lot of Wildean wordplay here. This is not a talky script. This is a very squelchy script. And in fact, when I see this again at home, and I will, and I'll turn on the subtitles because I will, squelchy noises is going to be a lot of the subtitles. Yes. But you also brought up something about feminine self-loathing in your review. And what happens here is these two...
People are the same person, but they have this mutual antipathy toward each other, which becomes what the film's about. Yes. And that self-loathing. externalized is kind of the through line that goes through the entire film. Yeah. And I think that's what makes this such a unique film. One of the films that came to mind when watching this and after the fact was Alex Garland's Men.
Okay. Remember that movie? We actually did it. We did an episode on it. I was not high on this film. And part of the reason why was because that movie is same kind of. concept of like we're gonna pummel you over this like with this idea and just lots of vibes and there's also like some really disgusting body horror in that movie but the issue for me with that movie is that you know it's this perspective of like and what we get out of a lot of me too stories of like
we're just going to talk about how terrible men are. And we're going to, you know, keep hammering that home. And I think the genius of this film, of the substance, is the fact that this is really focused on, you know. The Dennis Quaid character is on the periphery. He's only in a handful of scenes. It's really he's the catalyst. And then it's all about how the psychological and like emotional toll of what men have done and of misogyny and the patriarchy and all those.
things the internal becomes external in every way possible and i think that is the key difference and why this movie works so much better even though they're kind of coming at the same sort of like
conclusion about how terrible misogyny is. Right. I would push back a little bit because I think men's target was... misogyny this film's targets are all over the damn place well sure let's take them off patriarchy kind of writ large yes the beauty industry yes uh plastic surgery in particular uh what else america this is kind of a satire of america yeah from an outside
perspective from a very french perspective i think and the thing that you also brought up in your review is when you go this big and you're satirizing when do you stop satirizing and when do you just start doing something else where you're not really being incisive, right? You're not using a scalpel. You're using a sledgehammer. This film is definitely in the sledgehammer category. Uh-huh.
But what happens to the satire when you go that big? I mean, for me, it got to the point where my senses were just completely dulled. Yeah. And I was just like... Okay, but are we saying anything new here? And I do think it kind of fumbles in the last third act where we've reached the pinnacle of what we're going to do, but then we just keep going even further. As it was, I was just kind of like...
This is, I get it. I guess in my older age as well, I feel like I get even less, I'm less desensitized in a way by violence. And there is a lot of just like... violence upon the self in a way that was just... too much for me. But I can also see why other people might just be like, this is a vibe. I'm going to go with it. I'm all in. And I also, again, I think that the idea of this internal, just how much self-loathing you have. I mean, there is a moment and I think there is a moment.
in this film that like is quieter, but really, really works well and hammers home, hammers, pummels, all these things. The point that she's making where, you know, the Elizabeth character, Demi Moore's character, is asked out on a date. And she spends a long time getting ready for that date. There's a lot of standing in front of the mirror, you know, looking at your skin and how like not supple it looks anymore, like seeing the wrinkles and then looking at your whole body. And I'm not.
50 yet but I have already started to feel those things and I've already been in that exact position and to me like I love the way just like that very sort of quiet-ish moment in the film gets that point across completely I felt that because it was dealing with something real. But the rest of this film, as you allude to, it's a very hyper-stylized world. It's like an LA that doesn't actually exist. You know, the production design is gorgeous.
But also, we're living in a world where there's pagers and USB drives, and the triggering action for this movie is TV ratings for an aerobics daytime show. Yeah, she's like a Jane Fonda-esque.
And also you have the Dennis Quaid character giving this very stylized performance. You know, the director uses the fisheye lens a lot and Dennis Quaid leans into the fisheye lens. But even when he's not leaning into the fisheye lens, he's giving a very fisheye lens performance. It's very – at one point I actually watched him –
crancing across the screen. And the only real people in this movie are Elizabeth and Sue. Everybody else is a cartoon. And so the film itself becomes a cartoon. And I guess... Is the director's point I want to slice away at this beauty standard and expose, or is it just to make everybody in the audience squirm and laugh? Which...
you know, a mission accomplished. At the risk of being boring, I do think it's a little bit of both. And the question is, like, can she actually have it both ways? And I think it's just really your mileage may vary. I think some people might be able to see both. And I think some people might just be like, what?
This is just too much. But I like that sort of disorienting sense of, like, what time period are we in? Because I think there's a way, like, if I was going to put on my, like, we're in film school hat and we're going to analyze everything about this. I think there's a way where you're just like, well, I think the reason why we don't really know what time period is, it's because like.
Everything comes back to itself and we're always repeating. And we still feel like we live in this like 80s era, even though we are in the present day. All right. So we touched on Demi. Let's talk about Margaret Wally, who's the other half of this film. She has even, I feel like less of a character, of course, because like.
She is born out of Elizabeth. So there's also the sense that, again, she is the younger person. She is the more, quote unquote, perfect, desirable version. And I think this movie has a lot of nudity. None of it is... I don't think enticing. It's not meant to be enticing. There's moments in front of the mirror. And the first time she emerges out of Elizabeth's body, she spends a long time looking in the mirror and just being like, oh, man, look at this.
And I love the way there's this contrast between, you know, the younger version feeling not having those feelings yet of not being perfect or not being good. And I think Kweli, she's clearly... playing that role in a way that I think is very dynamic and interesting. Yeah, this film goes hard on practical effects. There might be some CGI in there somewhere, but it really feels like these are physical, tactile, puppety, gross tumor.
kind of things going on. I also like the logistics of the substance, how you get it, how you administer it. Yeah, it's cool. It's very cool. And it's something that might be contributing to the fact that it won't screenplay because this film escalates. It doesn't, as we said, it doesn't twist.
And it goes bigger and bigger, but it builds in moments like that moment you talked about in front of the mirror, moments where we figure out exactly how we do these logistics of administering the drug that don't ground it. I wouldn't call this a grounded film in a million years. but give you something to hold on to as...
The film's getting bigger and bigger. Yeah, I think for me, there's a world in which you could see this movie playing out where the substance is like she has to go see like a plastic surgeon or a doctor or whatever. And the fact that it's self-administered. Yeah.
adds to this just like layer of how unscientific this is and it kind of relates to this sort of trend that we have of mostly women going to get you know bbls like butt injections and whatever and going to different countries to do it and there's a person who she calls on the phone various times and we only hear the voice of this person we never see them there is world building here even if the characters are not fully fledged out there is a sense of what this world is even if that world is like
Very disorienting and confusing. But it does keep going. You're right. It does keep going and going. Until we get to the ending. And here, folks, is where we're going to not spoil the ending, but talk about the ending. Because you can kind of see where this movie is going from the jump. And it goes there. It goes there big. It goes there hard. She becomes a monster. She becomes like a tumor.
with teeth. What'd you think of that? Yeah, it was one of those things where I was just thinking to myself, I just got to go with it. This is... What are we doing here? I guess we're going to keep going. At one point, someone in the audience literally yells, there's a monster. She's a monster. I'm like, okay, we're doing very Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.
Why not? This is where I kind of tuned out. But also the thing that I found more interesting was the final shot, which sort of mimics the opening shots. There's a lot of shots that are sort of. The camera is directly above and it happens for several moments. And after she's become this monster and like.
Basically exploded all over the audience. Spurting blood. Spurting blood. All over the audience to implicate them. We get it. Yes. We are the problem. It's us. It's us. We are the problem. She just kind of becomes this. glob that I think is supposed to look like a Medusa head. A blob with a face. A blob with a face. And also kind of looks like a cracked egg. Sure. And eggs are a big part of this film. That's true. And she just kind of crawls across.
the ground, goes outside onto her Hollywood star. I loved that final shot, in part because it does feel kind of quieter. I guess I wasn't expecting it to. Comparatively, yeah. Yeah, it's relatively quieter or just like... just a little bit more subdued than everything that immediately preceded it. It's a shocking final image. You know, there's plenty of movies and shows that have done like the final image where the character's looking into the camera. This is, I think...
taking it in a different direction that I think totally works. And I really dug it. But I'm curious what you thought about it. How did that feel to you? I thought it was a perfect bookend, right? I mean, it's exactly how, like, I couldn't figure out how this film was going to end. I mean, I knew something bad. Exactly. And squelchy was going to happen. I didn't expect that to be such a mirrored thing. And at the very beginning of the film, she uses that shot to...
take us through the passage of time as Elizabeth's star fades, right? And her Hollywood star gets cracked and overrun. At one point it's snowing for some reason in LA. This is when I knew. This is when I knew. Okay, what's going on here? Yeah. Did you think that the Dennis Quaid character needed more of a comeuppance given how awful, cartoonishly awful he is? He's just one of the people in the audience who gets sprayed with blood and...
other stuff. This is where I kind of come back to, you know, the movie men, but also just what we're supposed to expect from these types of stories. And I... kind of like that he didn't get a comeuppance because again it's not about him it is but it's not about him it is about how much women we have been taught to hate ourselves and At one point, Elizabeth does says, I hate myself. Like, it's kind of crucial to what Farjah is trying to do. What do we do with that information?
I don't know. But yeah. I loved it. You liked it. Would you agree, though, that the most important thing, if you're going to see this film, is to see it with a crowd? Yes. I do think it is the type of movie that you need to see with like...
A lot of other people. Right. Yeah. And even if you wait to see it when it gets on streaming, see it with friends so that some of your friends will be crawling behind the couch and holding the cushions up to their face as things happen. But that's the fun part of this movie. Yeah, I have to.
say like i'm not the type of person who puts my fingers over my hand i just kind of look down and i'm and i was looking down for a lot of it it's like i can't i can't and covering my ears because again the sound design is on a whole nother level yep the secret is always to look at the lower left hand corner
screen, just the lower left-hand corner. Nothing ever happens down there. That's my secret to you. Thank you. Tell us what you think about the substance. Find us on Facebook at Facebook.com slash PCHH. And that brings us to the end of our show. Ayesha Harris, thanks so much for being here. Thank you.
Thank you, Glenn. Being here with me in person, IRL. And just a reminder that signing up for Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio, and you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free, so please go find out more at plus.npr.org.
or visit the link in our show notes. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger and edited by Mike Katzoff. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy. And Hello, Come In provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon. and we'll see you all tomorrow.