The pessimist in me hates when I’m bombarded with movie recommendations, delivering suggestions with such intensity that you’d think their lives depended on it. Ironically, as time slowly eases the weight of that pressure, the optimist in me begins to find those same recommendations somewhat intriguing. That was the case with a movie called The Substance, which I finally watched, and to my surprise, it turned out to be the opposite of what I expected.
Within the first few minutes, I was already familiar with the tone and premise, thanks to all the trailers people had urged me to watch over the past few months. I kept waiting for a story to take shape, but everything felt more like a music video or a stylish showcase, placing visuals above, dare I say, substance.
As more minutes passed, I felt an increasing desire to see these characters meet their demise. I had no investment in any of them. They were hollow, vapid shells without a single redeeming quality. I’ll be the first to admit I dislike when reviewers rewrite a movie’s premise to suit their own expectations, but in this case, I genuinely wish they had explored Demi Moore’s backstory. Even a hint of humanity would have gone a long way toward making her struggles feel at least somewhat sympathetic. Sadly, that never happened, and it became nearly impossible to feel anything for such pretentious, insufferable characters. As the film’s absurdity ramped up, I found myself laughing more and more at all the wrong moments.
The abundance of slow-motion shots set to electronic music, combined with wide-angle closeups that felt like the result of binge-watching old Peter Jackson splatter films, eroded any sense of logic the film was trying to establish. Take this for example: if the two central characters are meant to share the same brain and are truly one person, as the film repeatedly insists, then why do they loathe each other so deeply? We are told over and over again that they are not separate beings, that they are one and the same. Yet everything about them, inside and out, screams contradiction. That disconnect made no sense to me, and by the end, the entire film felt like a beauty queen’s fever dream.
When it finally came to an end, and the over-the-top climax made its last desperate attempt to shock the audience, I was relieved. I wanted to enjoy this movie. As I mentioned earlier, I expected something different. I believed the praise and the promise of its concept. But holy hell, this turned out to be one of the worst films I have ever wasted my time on. And I do mean wasted. Time is precious. It deserves to be protected with the same intensity we bring to the things we are passionate about. When something so utterly hollow steals that time from you, it’s more than disappointing. It is infuriating. Sometimes life surprises us with beauty, and other times it reminds us just how boring and empty it can be. In this case, it offered neither style nor substance.
