I tried The Substance and it tasted like Hagsploitation

I finally got round to watching The Substance; a body horror about female aging and female response and resistance to aging. If I were to draw a Venn diagram (which I have for your viewing pleasure) this film would land squarely (or circle-y) in the middle of The Fly and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?.

To summarise, a 50 year old woman named Elisabeth Sparkle, hagified by society, desperately tries to get back into control of her own body and life by taking a mysterious medication called the Substance. Hijinks enSue (pun so intended) and the younger, tauter version of herself abuses Elisabeth (aka the Matrix) and the Substance in order to have more time in the world, thereby causing Elisabeth to age at an alarming rate until she becomes a mutated archetype of a hag. After killing the Matrix and realising that she too is starting to disintegrate, Sue takes the substance, creating the beautifully unhinged Monstro ElisaSue who reverse Carrie-s absolutely everywhere and is ultimately bludgeoned to death/explodes. If you haven’t seen this film, it’s now streaming on Mubi.

This was for sure one of my most anticipated films and I felt somewhat… disappointed. There has been a lot of discourse (at least in my corner of the internet) about The Substance, as with all self-proclaimed Feminist films. So I thought I’d add my two cents.

My main qualm with this film is that it labels itself as a Feminist Body Horror. Body Horror is a subcategory of horror whose main features are ‘the graphically depicted destruction or degeneration of a human body or bodies’. For me, to attach ‘feminist’ to the start of that sentence transforms it. Where classic body horror focuses on the peculiarity of aging, the horror of torture or the terror of forced or botched mutilation, ‘feminist body horror’ should either act as catharsis to the fears women face around harm that could be done to their bodies, or should incorporate an element of wonder and awe at the changes happening to a body. Classic body horror often strips autonomy from and fetishises the women that are usually the objects of the pain and horror, enhancing its voyeuristic nature (for example Cordelia in the later seasons of the Angel or Madison in one of my least favourite films Malignant). To illustrate my thoughts on this let’s play a quick game of Does This Author Consider This Feminist Body Horror Or Not (no cheating).

1. Ginger Snaps

   1. Yes-ish - Not only is Ginger’s metamorphosis gnarly, but watching her body actually undergo terrifying changes in tandem with and as a metaphor for puberty reflects how most women felt as teenagers seeing and feeling their bodies change so dramatically and rapidly. Additionally, if we’re being honest, getting your period really does feel like the climax of a horror film some days. This film gets a yes-ish because from what I remember the parts of the story involving men did not feel necessary to it at all.

2. Alien

   1. Yes - All the male characters are forcibly impregnated and penetrated by a phallic relentless monster, with a woman, the only one who recognised the true danger from the start, being the sole survivor.

3. Black Swan

   1. Yes - Nina’s obsession and the obsessive need to be perfect within her obsession manifesting itself in horrifying physical ways (whether real or imagined) are captivating and terrifying to watch.

4. The Substance

   1. …lol not so fast keep reading!…

So the question is, does the body horror in The Substance incorporate enough catharsis and/or awe for it to really feel like a Feminist Body Horror.

We spend very little time with the Matrix/Elisabeth at the start of the film before she begins to transform. We see her being hagified by society; she turns 50, her disgusting boss (played by Dennis Quaid, a bona fide Trump supporter mind you) fires her for being too old and a scary glass skinned Ken doll hands her the secret to eternal youth…unprovoked. All this follows a montage of Elisabeth’s star on the Hollywood walk of fame being constructed, celebrated and then desecrated. We spend the first chunk of the film simply being told that Elizabeth is Old And Haggard now, whilst hearing and seeing little from Elisabeth (outside of reactions to the aforementioned events) about her feelings towards her age, and starring at an ever dazzling Demi Moore. Although we get a great picture of how women, and specifically women in Hollywood, are vilified for showing any signs of natural aging, we don’t learn anything about who Elisabeth is beyond this. On the one hand it’s a meta commentary on how women’s value is quantified solely based on their appearance, on the other, this is what contributes to our limited feelings of catharsis later down the line. Once the radiant Sue (played by Margaret Qualley with prosthetic boobs) forcibly rips her way out of Elizabeth’s spine, she can once again can use her youth as currency to take the world by storm, and storm she does… until she breaks the rules of the Substance leading to her literally suck the life out of the Matrix until she’s (Elisabeth/Matrix) left visibly significantly older. As well as abusing the Substance, Sue literally abuses the Matrix, kicking and beating her to death. Before her death, we see a heartbreaking yet relatable scene where Elisabeth rages over her appearance as she gets ready with Guy Who Told Her She Was Still Hot whom she has no real interest in. We also see her binge eat, trash her apartment and get some only momentary courage to end her use of the Substance. Whilst we sympathise with Elisabeth in all these scenes, it is hard to overlook that the only traits we learn about her are those we’d consider negative. Aside from subtext, we learn that Elisabeth cares very deeply about her appearance, has a binge eating disorder, hates herself and Sue and is a coward (obviously these scenes weren’t, and art isn’t, this black and white… but let me cook). And then, when her body first begins to metamorphosise (i.e. the body horror post the initial transformation scene starts) what we see is her aging at a rapid pace. At this point, it feels we are meant to understand that her punishment is aging uncontrollably and her crime is abusing this mystery Substance. Here, the horror is an older woman’s body. One whose body has aged so quickly because she tried to resist her forced hagification. We are meant to derive cruel satisfaction and terror from a woman whose problems are societal and learned in nature but are constructed as internal and a result of absolute free will. In this way, The Substance is not cathartic but exploitative, and specifically hagsploitative (a term to describe the exploitation of aging women’s bodies as a means to horrify).

But does The Substance inspire awe? At the end of the film, the abuse of the Substance reaches fever pitch and the truly monstrous Monstro ElisaSue takes the stage to address her loving fans. She is unashamed of her horrific body (no offense, we love you Monstro ElisaSue) and this is the first glimpse into awe and catharsis we get outside of the conventionally beautiful Sue. Her shamelessness is met by fear and violence from the crowd and just as quickly as we start to feel a creepy catharsis and awe, her head is smashed in. After this she runs away and explodes, allowing what is left of Elisabeth (a face and some more unidentified squishy parts…ew…) to break free and die upon her Hollywood walk of fame star. The gross squishy slimy noises that absolutely assault your ears within this last scene of the film is actually the quietest part in a long time, and we are able to sit in our awe and conclude that Elisabeth just wanted to be loved and free from all external expectations of her body…

…Yet, her untimely death was still a result of violent misogyny. I left feeling sad, disgusted and yet comforted that we still understand the message to be one of self love.

To conclude, I felt that the body horror in The Substance relied far too heavily on the ‘horror’ of the aging female body and attempts to make a hag out of a character I felt nothing but immense sympathy for. Whilst I do think that the film has Feminist significance (the message of struggle against societal beauty standards being a truly fruitless and futile one), body horror cannot truly be Feminist until it wholly unsubscribes from the depiction of the natural female body in any of its forms as a source of horror.