Demi Moore goes under quite the transformation in The Substance, the new horror film by Coralie Fargeat. The film is in theaters via Mubi after having a festival run that included the Cannes Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival.
The film, also starring Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid, is pretty wild and has an even wilder ending–leaving viewers wanting to unpack it all
What is the plot of The Substance?
The film follows Elisabeth (Moore), a former Hollywood starlet whose career is fading fast. Now, her last vestige of fame is headlining her own line of fitness videos. But as she comes up on her 50th birthday, she comes across a drug that could recreate her youth.
As Entertainment Weekly noted, the drug comes with some intense fine print. “This new being she ‘births’ will not exist separately from her,” states the outlet. Though they are separate bodies, they are the same and can only function in the world while the other is in a state of hibernation.” Every seven days, Elisabeth and her younger self Sue (Margaret Qualley) must switch bodies.
As Elisabeth and her doppelganger Sue try to live with each other, it becomes clear that Sue is taking over Elisabeth’s old life as a popular, dynamic star. Not only that, but Sue begins to live without needing Elisabeth’s “stabilizer” spinal fluid.
What happens at the grisly ending of The Substance?
So what happens at the end? Both Sue and Elisabeth meet some grisly fates. Elisabeth ends up killed by Sue in order to completely inhabit her life. But Sue’s fate is even more graphic as she stands on stage in front of her adoring public. Her body begins to deteriorate and transform into a monstrous version of herself and explodes until just her face remains.
This moment of release, to put it mildly, seems tragic. But it is actually supposed to be a triumphant ending for the character.
What does the end of The Substance film truly mean
Fargeat describes the final scene as Elisabeth or Sue finally being “free from her human body and appearance.”
“It’s the first moment where she’s able to love herself. It’s the moment she sees herself and it’s not disgust, but in fact, it’s as if she’s seeing her true self for the first time,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “Finally, she doesn’t have to care what she looks like, she doesn’t have to care what people are going to think. For the first time, there’s self-indulgence, tenderness. It’s the first time she looks at herself in the mirror and doesn’t criticize herself. She decides, okay, I’m going to go out there, this is me, I have my right to have my place in the world.”
Moore also talked about Sue’s final form. She said to Entertainment Weekly that Sue’s monstrous form is “the ultimate sense of the souls’ freedom, because she’s finally free of the prison of her own body, and she’s back tot he purity in the sense of who she really is, without that. It’s just dissolving back into nothingness, from whence we all came.”
Qualley also described her character as “bereft of a soul through most of the film, and as her body falls apart, and she becomes this monster, that’s when she experiences love for the first time and fully accepts herself.”
The Substance is now in theaters.
