The Substance brings body horror to the big screen in complete homerun of a movie

It's official... The Substance has overtaken Longlegs and Challengers as my favorite new movie this year. Anyone who has read a description of The Substance likely knows the route it will go. The commentary on women's beauty standards is certainly not subtle, but nothing about this movie is. It's about as in-your-face and graphic as movies go, and this was truly its greatest strength. What could have been done in a much more understated form pales in comparison to the entertainment provided in the obvious. Some reviewers felt that director Coralie Fargeat treated them as fools who needed the point to beat them over the head, but what is the use in subtlety with such a raw topic?

Lately, I have felt that media has been coming for me at just the right time. Most blissfully, I have found the books that I'm reading so interwoven with my life and the other media I consume. Often, this provides me with a stronger respect for what I am reading/watching/hearing, which is exactly what happened here. Right now, I am in the middle of reading the book Doppelganger by Naomi Klein. In one specific portion of the book, Klein discusses coupling. While this can have a variety of meanings and applications, the one that felt most poignant to me was self-coupling, when one perceives two versions of themselves. Whether or not each of these versions truly exists (old versus young) or is completely hypothetical (real versus idealized), humans have a tendency to lust for what they are not. Klein says that when you pour your life into self-transformation, "there is you as you are now, and - ever present - there is you as you imagine you could be, with enough self-denial and self-discipline, enough hunger and enough reps."

The Substance explores this concept in a hypothetical situation in which no work is necessary. You don’t have to buy into a diet and there is no need to waste your precious time at the gym. All you have to do is commit to this shady medical intervention and your idealized self will come, beautiful and ready to capture hearts. At this point, both you (the "matrix") and your new self will have to balance this agreement and find a way to coexist, switching off every seven days. I think it's incredibly easy to watch this movie and wonder why anyone would do this. Why would someone give up so much of themself for this dual-self who has put in zero of the hard work, yet has all of the glory? In this case, our main character seemingly gets no benefit at all, but at the crux of this deal is the point that there is no "we" between these doppelgangers; they are one. While our old, out-of-style main character repeatedly gets beat up by the industry that once loved her, she can find solace in the fact that this other version of herself, independent as they may be, has brought new purpose and excitement to her life. In one of this film's most stomach-churning scenes, we watch this new, youthful counterpart scramble through a nightmare in which the matrix's eating habits negatively impact her thin body. In a brilliant case of irony, the new self's dishonest use of the system quite literally destroys the matrix. Even as her body becomes a horrifyingly distorted version of its former beauty, the matrix struggles with leaving the program behind as her smooth, vibrant, youthful counterpart is everything she used to be and everything she wishes she was.

While the point of the movie is simple and accessible, the lengths the film goes to are nothing less than a shock to the system. The body horror was well done, jarring, and simply nasty. As a young woman who constantly sees men discussing celebrity women hitting what they refer to as "the wall," this movie was unbelievably pleasing and devastating. Like the men in real life who make these claims about beautiful aging women, the men in this movie were incredibly surface-level and certainly did not hold themselves to the same impossible standards they held these women to. 

For me, this movie hit all of the perfect marks and gets an undeniable 5 star rating. This is not one to wait for; it was absolutely made for theaters! While I think it likely has more for the women who may relate to the major themes, I think this movie is a worthwhile watch for anyone who thinks they can stomach it.