Anyone who has watched The Substance will recognise that it’s not exactly an easy film to unpack. After the credits rolled and the lights in my screening turned on, I felt that all I had were questions, questions that didn’t need — and would never get — answers. Mostly, I was trying to make sense of the genuinely insane experience I had just sat through. With that in mind, I think it’s worth referencing some of these experiences.
Immediate reflections on the aftermath of Coralie Fargeat’s ‘The Substance’
Option A
Dear god. I mean, jesus. It invites you to anticipate the worst, to see that its leering look at beauty, its obsession with the hideous, its almost gleeful tone, won’t pull any punches. So it takes the story to its most brutal, horrific endpoint. And keeps digging. It goes well below the soil, its shovel clattering against bedrock. And digs again. Down and down into the depths of existential nightmares and body horror.
