Following the success of 2017’s Revenge, director Coralie Fargeat began working on what would become her next feature. At the time, Fargeat had not long entered her 40s, a transition that brought with it a whole host of anxieties. Negative thoughts concerning her relevance crept into her mind, tormenting and taunting her with voices that whispered problematic notions.

“When I had passed my 40s, I really started to have these crazy, violent thoughts that my life was going to be over — it’s the end of being interesting, it’s the end of having any value in society. It’s a theme that lives with me since [ I was] a little girl because the movie is not about just aging; it’s about how you’re supposed to look and behave to conform to the idea that society has built of what it is to be a girl, what it is to be a woman. And a huge part of it has been, I think, defined through the eyes of men — what a girl should be, what a woman should be, to be interesting in the eyes of men, to be desirable, to be worshipped. At different stages of my life, it has brought huge issues about feeling that if I wasn’t in those boxes, I wasn’t worth being in the world. So at each stage of my life, it kind of tyrannized me: “If I don’t look like that, I should look like that,” if I wanted to be someone [who] could be interesting.”

To try and make better sense of the discomfort these thoughts evoked, Fargeat channeled them into her screenplay, utilizing the body horror genre to address the negative thoughts she was dealing with. This is how 2024’s The Substance came into being; a film that makes heavy use of extreme body horror and a Black Mirror style of science fiction storytelling to explore societal attitudes toward women’s beauty standards, the self-destructive habits we endure to try and escape the natural process of aging, and the collective denial we share when it comes to our own mortalities. This isn’t simply a film designed to shock, but one that also forces us to take a closer look at the deeper truths to our existences that lurk behind every superficial mask we apply to our identities.

Juxtaposing superficial beauty against visceral body horror has always evoked a unique sense of unease within me, and I’ve often wondered why that might be the case. Could it be the problematic clash of seeing an image I perceive as conventionally attractive against something I perceive to be otherwise? That was always my initial assumption; that I’m recoiling at something my subconscious has been wired to disapprove of against something it takes pleasure from. After watching The Substance, however, I’m starting to suspect there might be a deeper reason. The sequence which made me question this previously held belief concerns the moment in which Elizabeth Sparkle’s younger self (simply referred to as Sue) is forced to return into her original body. By this point in the story, Sue has been fighting the need to revert back into Elizabeth, disgusted at her older self for spending her days eating food and snatching time away from her. Never mind specific instructions to transition back every seven days; Sue’s having far too much fun to listen to guidelines. Therefore, she’s gone against the rules and left her original self to “rot” (for want of a better phrase).

During this sequence, we see the young, conventionally attractive Sue rush back into Elizabeth’s body to avoid a total physical collapse. The neglect she’s inflicted upon her original form prior to this moment has resulted in huge physical consequences for Elizabeth’s body. During this moment, we see our protagonist’s consciousness transition away from the young, conventionally gorgeous Sue, back into the broken shell that has become of Elizabeth’s body. Flesh sags, bones snap, and hair slips away from her drained skull. We literally watch our protagonist shift from an idealised body to a mind encased in failing flesh. It was at this moment that the horror I’ve felt toward such a startling transformation gained more clarity. The terror within this scene lies within the central truth that lurks deep within; that no matter how much we diet, exercise, apply foundation, hydrate our skin, change our wardrobes or surgically alter our bone structures to conform to perfect ideals concerning youth or womanhood, we are still expiring flesh and blood. We all age and fade as time ticks forward. Every attempt to avoid this detail does not reverse or pause the process; it simply hides the truth from a distance for a little longer. Sooner or later, the masks will become impossible to conceal, even from afar.

At its heart, The Substance is about society’s general attitude toward women and the unrealistic beauty standards thrust upon them. Our culture celebrates women who conform to its own collective ideas of what it deems attractive, all whilst punishing those who fail to tick enough boxes for its liking. The very culture that glorifies youth, slimness, and specific aesthetics attempts to sell back a “solution” to the standards they’ve imposed. Products, procedures, and services exist as a promise to resolve the very thing they’ve told us is a problem in the first place. These so-called resolutions involve strenuous workout regimes, chemical-packed injections, razor-sharp scalpels, and miserable diets. From hair removal to surgery, we live in a world that tends to promote pain to achieve perfection. Imagery relating to all of this is threaded throughout the entirety of this movie. Its lead protagonist, Elizabeth Sparkle, must endure suffering in order to bring her “Sue” to life. It’s an amplified extreme of the very services existing in our own world, taken to their logical conclusion.

Tucked within these ideas of beauty standards sits a fear regarding the very notion of aging and death. The idea of youthfulness we hold in our collective imaginations isn’t just the stage of life it truly is, but an aspiration we forever strive toward. Being young is no longer just a transient fact of life, but a destination we must aspire to, no matter our age. We cling to it, because to accept it as a passing moment is to accept that one day we will wither and die. Elizabeth escaping to Sue represents this desire to cling to youth through technological means. Our protagonist is ashamed of who she has become, and who she will become. Society has told her its wrong, and she’s agreed with their assessment. No amount of money or technological advancement will alter her date of birth, yet that doesn’t stop her from trying.

Throughout the duration of this movie, Elizabeth is punished by both her peers and herself for her mortality. Her career slides because she is getting older, yet she even forces isolation upon herself because of this fact. There are moments in which she’s offered on-ramps to a life where companionship and love may well be possible, yet constant reminders of Sue hinder her from taking these roads. Instead, she inflicts more pain upon herself. She punishes and withers away, all in pursuit of a fantasy she’s been told should never be transient.

What works so well within The Substance is this duality of punishment from both the internal and external world. The ways in which both Elizabeth and Sue treat one another represents the internalised nature of societal misogyny. Elizabeth quickly grows resentful toward Sue and her beauty, constantly comparing herself to her younger alter ego and punishing herself when she cannot match her visual appeal. This fast grows into a mockery and rivalry; Elizabeth hates her for being pretty and younger, turning on the very thing she aspires to be. Likewise, Sue becomes embarrassed by Elizabeth. She strips her older self of her humanity, locking her in a cupboard, neglecting her, and seeing her as nothing more than a hindrance. To Sue, Elizabeth is less than her; an aging inconvenience with no worth or right to a life. These ideas of resenting the young and reviling the old feed into the very behaviours people exhibit when comparing themselves to others or even their younger selves. Those who meet the standards are hated for ticking all the “right” boxes, whilst those who fail to are mocked and discarded.

What is most remarkable about The Substance is just how effectively Coralie Fargeat has utilised the body horror genre to communicate very real societal attitudes surrounding how women are commodified and forced to adhere to beauty standards, even if it means forcing themselves through pain and self-sacrifice. It is also a film that forces us to confront the fact that we cannot latch onto youth, no matter how much we, or our culture, tell us we must. There is no escaping the inevitable.

There is, of course, a criticism to be made about the film’s imagery and its possible consequences. Could the trope of contrasting conventional beauty against extreme aging further promote the very beauty standards it has been designed to criticisse? Some are of the opinion that extensive shots of Margaret Qualley’s naked frame, compared to Demi Moore’s heavily prosthetic body, strengthen this notion of youth equating to good and old equating to horrific. The Substance is very much a film that uses the very techniques it is criticising to reinforce its point. While those aware of the themes it is exploring are likely to find acknowledgement and discomfort in the culture it is criticising, it may be fair to fear that those less attuned to the problems being examined might further buy into the very ideas they are critiquing.

Satire becoming part of the problem is often a risk when executing films in this manner; there is always room for misreading or even slipping into the very machine you are raging against. Be that as it may, from my personal perspective, this was an effective and visceral way of examining the pains of womanhood in a world that punishes us for being flesh and blood. Elizabeth and Sue’s doomed journeys represent extreme versions of the ordeals many women subject themselves to in order to maintain the mask that keeps their careers and relevance afloat in the eyes of the male gaze. Furthermore, the film’s debunking of the fantasy of eternal youth through technological progress is brought sharply into focus, a sharp reminder that all of us are mortal, no matter how many boxes we can tick.

The Substance is a strong example of a film that was written by someone attempting to process the internalized pressures they were placing upon themselves as they entered their fourth decade of life. Through societal expectations, Coralie Fargeat found herself wrestling with the fears of no longer conforming to the ideals of beauty and youthfulness often imposed upon women in both the culture and society she was apart of. Such ideas channeled through the mechanics of science fiction story telling resulted in a story that uses body horror to explore womanhood, Hollywood and mortality to great effect.