Body Horror

The Substance, "Ozempic Month," and more spooky season thrills.

“Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself?” That’s the fundamental question of The Substance, a body horror film that’s been sloshing around my mind since I saw it a few weeks ago. It’s the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, an actress/fitness star who’s unceremoniously cut loose from her day job when the producer of her show decides she’s too old for TV. Elisabeth (played by Demi Moore, who looks incredible by the way) is offered an experimental drug that promises to release a younger, more perfect version of herself. The only catch is that the young and old versions have to swap places every seven days. Of course, things don’t go to plan. 

The movie is a satire about how far we’ll go to banish the specter of aging, and the harsh treatment women endure as they get older—at the hands of others and themselves. The story is effective because it has a ring of truth. Who hasn’t looked in the mirror and wanted to turn back time on the reflection before them? 

“The substance” is an injectable solution that duplicates one’s DNA, creating a younger self that’s literally birthed out of the older body. Elisabeth Sparkle’s alter ego is Sue, played by Margaret Qualley, and the film spends a gratuitous amount of time studying her poreless complexion and toned body (there are a LOT of close-ups on Margaret Qualley’s butt). From what I understand, there’s only one consciousness between the two selves, so whoever’s enjoying their seven days in the sun has to keep the other on an IV drip in the dark.

There must be some kind of cognitive dissonance at play though, because Elisabeth and Sue quickly come to despise one another. At one point, Elisabeth eats a prolific amount of rotisserie chicken and leaves greasy carcasses all over her apartment for Sue to deal with. In a pivotal moment, Sue—having replaced Elisabeth on her show and living her best life—decides she doesn’t want to swap back and steals precious time from her older self, causing Elisabeth to age rapidly. I won’t spoil the back half of the movie, but let’s just say the two sabotage the experiment and become all the more monstrous for it. 

Yeah you did, Careen!

The Substance is the kind of movie that horror fans will love and cultural critics will love to hate. The characters are as vivid as they are shallow, the dialogue is minimal, and the story wastes no time with exposition. There’s a luminous quality to the film that makes it feel sanitized in an LA med-spa kind of way, even if the subject matter is utterly gruesome. Above all, The Substance is a vibe. It builds to a fever pitch on a wave of sinister synths interspersed with visceral sound effects: an egg squelching into two; bones cracking in and out of place; syringes plunging into pus-filled abscesses.

At the Cannes Film Festival, where it won best screenplay, The Subtance sparked debates about whether its excessive gore and nudity were a stylized send-up of beauty standards or a cruel joke on women. That perspective misses the point, as director and screenwriter Coralie Fargeat pointed out during the Cannes press conference. “My point was that our bodies as women define how we are viewed in society. The violence we inflict upon ourselves reflects the violence that surrounds us.” 

The violence depicted in the film might be a metaphor, but the pain we endure in the name of beauty is very real. Treatments like laser facials, chemical peels, and ultherapy come to mind; they’re all relatively mundane, but man, do they hurt. Having my eyebrows microbladed makes me want to scream, but it requires me to hold completely still. Laser hair removal is no picnic, either. As beauty standards fluctuate, invasive procedures like facelifts, breast implants and reductions, tummy tucks, and BBLs wax and wane in popularity. And of course, there’s the matter of Ozempic.

I’ve been following fashion month via several writers and the references to semaglutide are numerous. In September, Lauren Sherman made the following observation in her “Ozempic Week” newsletter for Puck: 

Last week, the Financial Times published an op-ed by Jo Ellison about how “newly emaciated” editors and stylists are dancing around the fact that they’re taking weight loss drugs. “I totally understand that someone who has spent a career in a business that loathes fat might want to join the wraithlike club,” she writes. “That so few of them want to discuss their drug use just goes to show how pervasive sizeism remains. Culturally, we are still dismissive of anyone who has simply shrugged off weight without having to ‘do the work’.” But there is work involved, isn’t there? The side effects of semaglutide include nausea, diarrhea, dizziness, rapid heartbeat, and fatigue—and those are just the minor ones. There’s also a financial sacrifice involved if paying out of pocket. Sounds like work to me?

If there’s one clear line we can draw between the world of The Substance and our own, it’s that people are participating in a societal experiment involving injectable GLP-1s, and the body-altering effects will shape our beauty standards for the foreseeable future. Whether or not it’s medically necessary, people can now make themselves thinner at will—that is, for as long as they’re taking their meds. Hopefully, those meds are FDA-approved! But you know what? I get it. If I had a spare $900/month lying around, I could be convinced to try it. I’d love to shed the 20 pounds that separate me from some of my favorite clothes, which I still keep in hopes that one day I’ll be catwalk-thin again. But I also love to eat, and I think a world without appetites would be a dull one to live in. 

More Spooky Season Recs

1. Agatha All Along is a very fun show and I won’t let haters like John Campea tell me otherwise! I recommend watching it, then revisiting wtichy classics like The Craft and Practical Magic.

2. I just finished Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story and it is chilling. I also just heard that Kim Kardashian is advocating for their release, and I’m not sure how to feel about that.

3. The reviews of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot reboot have not been great, but may I suggest reading the book? Or queue up Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass on Netflix; you will not be disappointed.

Weekend Plans

The Infatuation just released a list of the best bagels in NYC and I look forward to trying them all. I will report back. 

Fashion month just wrapped and I have a lot of material to review. Stay tuned for my favorite shows/looks. I think I’ll write about them next week.

I’m hoping to stop by the Fishwife pop-up today or tomorrow—shoot me a text if you want to join.

That’s all for now. See you next week!

X Alli