The Substance Is A Complete Trainwreck

The massive critical and audience acclaim of The Substance really blows my mind, because this film was genuinely atrocious. It had some potential, and despite a rough start, I hung in there till the 40% mark. But the writing was so unbelievably bad, and it dragged out a story that had no reason to last beyond twenty or thirty minutes.

The Substance, as explained by eggs.

Sometimes an idea doesn't really have legs, and it especially doesn't merit a runtime of any more than 20 minutes. That is really the main problem with The Substance. Relying on its message to carry the entire film, this movie lacks the thematic and story development needed to fully realize its premise beyond its overly explicit dialogue.

The film opens with a scene (pictured above) featuring an egg that essentially previews the entire movie in a nutshell, followed by a shot at the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The music during this part didn't really match the visuals (though I did like the crescendo as we're introduced to Elisabeth at her star). Overall, this opening lacks purpose beyond plainly telling us this is how the substance works and this is Elisabeth.

What follows is a painfully on-the-nose sequence showing people walking over Elisabeth's star to indicate the passage of time and her fading relevance. They could’ve just quickly shown it withering over time to symbolically represent this, but they had to add in all that super corny dialogue basically telling us what’s going on and have people spill stuff on her star. This is just a taste of the massive cloud of insecurity that hangs over this entire film, which stretches from its dialogue to its direction.

For instance, there are two early scenes with the executive in charge of Elisabeth's workout program in which he explains his decision to "retire" her. The camera right in his face in the first scene isn't actually a bad shot, but his dialogue is so explicitly expository like was there no subtle way to do this? He's talking about how Elisabeth is old and a woman's fertility decreases at 25....I mean, really? And of course, the whole time, Elisabeth is in the bathroom stall, hearing it all. LAME.

Then there's the second scene with him eating disgustingly with a fly buzzing around, shot and edited in a way that was trying WAY too hard to be meaningful. This is the sort of thing you might see in the senior thesis of an undergraduate film student, random stuff for the sake of seeming cool or stylistic rather than just telling the story. Similarly, there's this super quick zoom in on the walk of fame star after the "time lapse" that felt like it was only there because they had no other idea on how to transition to the next scene — though I'll admit at least the audio transition there was well done.

Not all the cinematography is bad. The scene with the creepy nurse taking Elisabeth's pulse was shot well, with nice closeups that felt purposeful rather than pretentious. But then they ruin the scene when the nurse randomly slips up and says, "You're a great candidate, I mean you're good to go." What??? Why would he even say that first part? We can already tell he's creepy, and since she takes out the flash drive about the substance in the next scene anyway, that in and of itself tells us that he put it there.

The promotional video she finds on the drive is so weird it felt crafted for the movie rather than an in-universe thing. The narrator of the video straight up says, "You are one, you can't escape yourself" which tells us about the way this thing works, but it's worded in such an ominous way. Why would they make their product sound so threatening if they're trying to get people to use it? I understand they want to create an ominous atmosphere for the audience, but it doesn't work internally.

Plus, the video is so insanely vague in terms of what it has to offer their customers that it doesn't even make sense for her to try it, no matter how desperate she is. I wish they hadn't even bothered to have her throw away the flash drive when she was literally gonna fish it out 2 minutes later. It's like they were trying to create extra plot and conflict where there doesn't need to be.

Nothing significant happened to change her mind. If they had her fish it out after seeing the newspaper ad, then it would make sense. But even then why bother having her throw it away? Have her just throw it onto her table or something and then call after seeing the paper ad. Going to the extreme of throwing it all the way to the bottom of the trash can is not for some character or story purpose — it's so they can do the shot from the bottom of the trash can.

Before now, we actually did get some nice cinematography with the first scene in her home as well as her awards, and the editing (minus the previously mentioned moments) was mostly pretty decent. But it really doesn't get any better than that for the rest of the movie. Literally one of the next shots had me rolling my eyes so hard because the directing is SO extra sometimes. Like why are you stylizing an aspirin dropping into water, especially to that extent? It just feels cheesy.

The changing scene actually wasn't bad either. They did a great job really conveying that extremely uncomfortable sense, like I could literally feel how disgusting and painful it was. But then we get these random closeups and over-stylization of the cigarettes like stop trying so hard and just focus on telling the damn story. Again, it's the massive insecurity underlying the film where the filmmakers didn't seem to believe the story or message could stand on its own.

You really see this with the audition scene for Elisabeth's replacement. It's commentary enough that these women's bodies are being judged by two guys who look like that. They didn't need that extra horribly scripted dialogue about the auditionee’s boobs and nose, like we get it. Nobody talks like this. Maybe they should've hired better actors who could convey their sentiments better with their face (and that goes for all the side actors in this movie, not that it can be helped when the directing is so overt).

Or maybe they could've crossed off the girl's name from their list. Then with Sue’s audition, the guy saying "everything looks like it's in the right place this time" is SO corny. All we need is them stating name, age, measurements — that alone tells you what matters to these men. You don't have to be so overt, like it actually really takes me out of the movie completely.

Like the exec renaming the assistant to make it shorter is so stupid bruh, again STOP TRYING SO HARD. All this extra ominous editing and music when he's like we'll make your schedule work, like oh my god, stop this. Not to mention they're acting like being a woman is SO easy when you're young and everyone's ready to cater to your whims. This is only so that Elisabeth is desperate to stay young, and although I do like the moment of Elisabeth going in the bathroom and seeing there's still two days left before she gets to be Sue again, I'm also thinking maybe get some hobbies?

Even as Sue, her screentime isn't the greatest. Like did they really need to show us the entire montage of her building that place behind the bathroom wall? Lucky for her she had the extra time alongside her day job and the extra space in the wall. Plus, then we have the absolute stupidity of Sue bringing a guy home on switch day, like at this point the plot is just them throwing in a bunch of random nonsense to just escalate things.

Even when something potentially interesting happens, it's done in such a boring way. I wanted her to run into other people on the substance but this older version of the nurse guy just gives a massive info dump telling us the theme of the movie in the middle of a diner where they're not even sitting together so everyone can hear.

At this point, the movie REALLY starts dragging. Sue's parts are somewhat watchable because at least she's doing stuff, but Elisabeth is literally doing NOTHING. Especially after the Sue’s extra hours section, it feels really sluggish like it's just taking way too damn long, and nothing they do from here on out is interesting at all.

The scene of Elisabeth wiping her makeup off and choosing not to go out is so lame and corny. She can't possibly be this haunted by the image of her younger and better self that she can't even go out to meet someone her age. There has been absolutely zero effort made by this movie to convey that society treats women like they expire with age. Apart from simply telling us she’s being replaced with Sue, they couldn’t make some effort to show the differences in how Elisabeth is treated in daily life?

To be honest, that’s because it wouldn’t work. Misogyny is so deeply entrenched in society that it's simply not enough to tell us hey, this woman's getting replaced by a younger model. They should’ve taken the time to build out Elisabeth's experiences rather than giving us a dumb montage of the walk of fame star which only functions as a recap of her fading relevance.

Also this movie couldn’t decide if it wanted to be about aging versus youth or if it wanted to be about the misogyny of it all. Rather than building out either of these themes through the characters journeys and plot or giving us a nuanced and intersectional examination of both, it’s just this one massively dragged out plotline.

This lack of thematic depth really becomes clear in the godawful scene of Elisabeth watching Sue on late night TV and getting mad at her. Please make it stop. Why would she be shocked to hear Sue and the tv host talk about Sue replacing Elisabeth, like girl you were there — YOU’RE THE SAME PERSON! You should know what you said.

You can't even argue that this was the point, for her to be pissed off and throwing eggs at how the young Sue is being treated, because it directly conflicts with the established internal logic of the film. She's been told she's the same person, she knows it, and she's only yelling at the TV because apparently we, the audience, are too stupid to otherwise understand her frustrations. Movies don't always need to have every little detail explained and accounted for but in this case, they obviously just needed this scene to be crazy. Plus her dialogue here is so bad, like "you wouldn't exist without me." Please stop talking to the audience; we know what's happening. You don't need to tell us.

Also no young actress replacing an older actress would ever go on national tv saying she's Jurassic. She'd get so much hate, especially from older generations, talking about how the slutty youth always disrespect their elders. There's just no nuance in this movie, no careful exploration of these topics. It’s literally just telling us hey, look, misogyny, and it’s problematic too because it suggests that younger girls with the “right measurements” like Sue can’t possibly face misogyny until they start losing their teeth or their beauty — which by the way, is another superficial ideal this movie could’ve explored. Like what about the fact that there are people who would consider Sue unattractive and they'd treat her differently based on that? Or the fact that beauty standards are pushed on us by the media and corporations, and not accurate to how humans would naturally see each other as evidenced by history.

There's also a missed opportunity here that highlights a lack of understanding of the themes. The movie reminded me how ALL our late night talk show hosts are older white men. Normally I wouldn't have an issue with casting a black man as a late night host as in a film because sometimes representation of roles comes in tv and movies before they do in real life, like black male presidents in multiple movies. But in this case, having a much older white male host would really highlight the double standard for men and women in addition to adding the slightest touch of intersectionality.

This scene also really highlights the ridiculousness of the worldbuilding 'cause the fitness show concept is so weird and feels really outdated. Like who cares about that? Sue being on this Jane Fonda-esque dance fitness channel and then becoming so famous she's on late night TV and becomes the new years eve hosts in 3 months is just completely unserious. It feels like they literally just made this up for the movie, for the sake of creating an allegory with Hollywood.

At this point in the film, I kept waiting for it to end and it just wouldn't freaking end. I couldn't even fast forward because of slow internet. There just isn't an organic character journey to follow, like it's just some plot points. Elisabeth terminated the substance, and now that she's done it she regrets it. Yawn. The fight between Elisabeth and Sue was so boring, and now there's a damn monster with both of them combined?

And using the Space Odyssey theme during this reveal? First Barbie (2023) did that, which was stupid, and now this movie? Can y'all not find original music? It feels like I’m watching a meme video. I managed to fast forward this whole monster and crowd scene and the movie STILL WOULDN'T END. Finally, the monster left and exploded and we're back at the Hollywood star and then it gets cleaned up and it ends. BORING.

This was such a bad movie that should've taken their two decent minutes (I mean that literally) and explored the substance idea in a short film that symbolically conveyed a simple theme. It could've been 20 minutes tops. Instead we got this bloated, pretentious mess that not only felt very outdated but also thought it could convince the audience it was a good film by covering it's garbage plotline and zero character development with dialogue that tells you the theme over and over and OVER again.

And this movie somehow won best screenplay at Cannes 2024! What is happening to this industry?? One can only hope that the rest of this decade can turn around this horrible trend of performative and surface level commentary-based storytelling and force industry tastemakers to actually learn something about storytelling craft, or we'll be stuck with just awful things to watch for quite a long time.

(For a deeper dive into the messed up film criticism complex, check out this article on the Triangle of Hollywood.)