I just saw this movie and I’m confused about the point of the substance. I thought Demi Moore would be able to live through and experience the same things as her “better self” but that’s not the case at all. They are two different people. They don’t even share the same memories, because it’s clear that Elisabeth and Sue don’t have any idea of what the other is doing while the other one is unconscious. So what does Demi Moore’s character gain from this? This makes the substance completely pointless.
What she gains is something she points at the end, she still sees Sue as a part of her. Her triumphs she feels as though are her own. I think in many ways it's almost like when parents live vicariously through their children. Sue on the other hand only sees her as a resource to be consumed.
I saw it as they would do the same if the roles were reversed. So one half gets all the glory but the price of that is the others suffering. saw someone say it's like when you act differently when you're happy and thriving compared to when you're suffering, but now there's a toxic degree of separation.
They are not 2 different people, they are one. They are 2 split personalities of the same consciousness. When it's Elisabeth it fully believes it's Elisabeth, and when it's Sue it fully believes it's Sue. If you go back to when Elisabeth first took the activator and Sue was born, it's quite clear that initially the consciousness was still in the Elisabeth personality from the way she reacts to seeing her own body in a state on the floor, and the fact the she still retains the knowledge of what to do after activating. Over time she develops a unique personality as Sue and the 2 personalities split apart into what seems like 2 distinctly different people, but this isn't the case, in reality Sue is still Elisabeth but she doesn't want to be Elisabeth, she resents that part of herself and hates her old body and the fact she even has to go back into it at all. Because of this she breaks the rules multiple times, consequently ruining Elizabeth's original body and causing Elisabeth to also resent and hate her younger self for not caring about her original body and being selfish, but in reality it's literally all this one consciousness making decisions that best suit whichever body it's in at the time, even if it negatively affects the other. I see how you could feel it's 2 separate people, at times it certainly seems that way but it's expressly stated that they are one, and many things in the movie confirm this fact. As for the part when Sue wakes up after Elisabeth attempts to terminate her, I really have no idea at that point lmao, did she gain her own consciousness in that moment? Or is one consciousness controlling 2 different bodies and personalities simultaneously? Either way this movie is absolutely nuts in the best way possible and I love it, hopefully you can get more from it on a second watch with these things in mind.
@@BeanMate The problem I’m having is the “You are one” plot. Because they are not “one” we see that in the movie. Sue needs Elisabeth to live but Elisabeth doesn’t need Sue to live…so how are they connected? They don’t even share the same memories. Elisabeth only knew about Sue’s one night stand because the guy left a note and his motorcycle helmet at her apartment. We also see scenes where Sue is telling Elisabeth’s unconscious body about her success. So if they are connected why doesn’t Elisabeth already know all of this? Wouldn’t it make more sense if we actually saw Elisabeth waking up remembering and feeling all the things Sue did and for a while it makes her happy but slowly she stops wanting to switch back to her older self? To me it looks like Sue is just a parasite that feeds off of Elisabeth to maintain her youth and beauty but again what does Elisabeth gain from this?
@@s.w.d4010 I'm not sure you're watching the same movie as me lmao, because you're saying we see that they aren't one in the movie, and I think that it quite explicitly shows and tells you the exact opposite, that they are one, and if you don't understand that even after reading my previous comment then I'm not sure how is best to explain it to you. Maybe try thinking about it this way, have you seen the movie "Split"? In that movie, James McAvoy plays a character called Kevin that has 24 different distinct personalities living within him, and the personality that is controlling the body at any given time is decided by a thing called "the light". Each personality has their turn in the light, and when not in the light the other personalities don't know/can't hear whatever the current personality in the light is doing/saying. I think it works similarly to that in The Substance, because as I said in my previous comment, I don't think it's separate consciousnesses that we're dealing with, but split personalities of the same consciousness, and using "the light" makes it easier to see why they wouldn't remember what the other body had done each time they switch. When Elisabeth first becomes Sue it's made quite clear that it's still Elisabeth's personality inside of a new body, but as time goes on and Elisabeth lives as Sue, she starts to develop a unique personality as Sue and this is where the split occurs, because while inside of Sue the consciousness doesn't feel like it is Elisabeth anymore and makes decisions based on what's best for Sue, not caring about the consequences for the other body at all, and when it's inside of Elisabeth it can't relate to Sue, it sees and feels the damage that Sue has done to it's original body and tries to blame Sue, complaining to the substance company that Sue isn't respecting the balance when in reality it is Elisabeth's consciousness doing these things to itself but is in denial about who is to blame for her horrific new body. As for "what does Elisabeth gain from this?" Obviously nothing, in fact she literally loses everything, but prior to taking the substance there was no way for her to know that would be the outcome, it was advertised to her in a much nicer way than what actually plays out, so asking what she gained is kinda silly because she was quite clearly intentionally mislead into thinking she was gaining her youth back, when in reality all she gained was a split personality disorder and her own death lmao.
I don’t think that she ever pays for the substance or that her access to it is tied to class. The guy who brings her in who she meets again at the diner works as a nurse. I think it’s supposed to feel more fable, like in that it’s a force she doesn’t understand but bc of her class feels she hubristically feels she can control
It’s true we don’t see her pay or anything, but the privilege and cost of cosmetology is a huge aspect of celebrity image and one I think is worth considering in a story whose entire subject is celebrity image. Regarding the nurse, I kind of assumed he was in on the enterprise and this was some sort of commentary on medical exploitation of celebrities (eg the Kanye/nitrous situation), but ultimately you’re right that this doesn’t REALLY hold up as a class commentary. My point is more so that it foregoes outward commentary like that (we never actually learn about who’s exploiting her, by design) because any potential material to make broader points is funneled back into the specific subject of body image. Good or bad, that’s what the movie is doing. It’s also true that the world of the movie is intentionally abstract and closed-off, but I don’t think it’s the point of a fable to NOT make us think about the real world. Again, Quaid’s character is named Harvey! Surely we’re supposed to be making some connections.
@@TaylorJWilliams I just mean the substance is not a thing of the world of the film, it has no creator or logic to its application beyond the trickster like humiliation of its subject (see: obvious warnings, the forcing of the subject to bow to get their neatly drip fed food to remind them of their place, personification as one voice instead of a corporate apparatus). The media org Harvey runs doesn’t force her onto it or have any relationship with the substance, instead they exist as external pressures that take a back seat to the primary externalized conflict within herself. Everything she loses she takes from herself and the substance only raises the stakes. Like even the first time she takes the extra spinal fluid is just her repeating the same pattern as the opening of the film when she tries to go out and ends up puking her guts out, in those early scenes heavy emphasis is placed visually on her back and it’s top lit with hard light in a way that exposes every imperfection and mark of age. When she then is hooking up with motorcycle douchebag the opposite motif is played with a dynamic camera move up Sues spine as she again overindulges and is faced with even more severe consequences when she wakes up the next morning. And it’s not even for work or any outside pressure or expectation it’s for sensory pleasure (Sue) or overindulgence (Elizabeth) and that cycle of the two desires feeding into one another as self hatred that the film is really interested in. She is offered the opportunity to end it repeatedly but is unable to summon the will to let go of her last vestige of beauty even when it costs her everything she once valued about herself.
I love this movie because of the profound significance for Demi Moore in the role. The actress herself has spent her entire career being both praised for her beauty and maligned for 'doing too much' to hold on to it. You can tell how cathartic some of the scenes were for her to act.
I saw this movie as being about the experience of aging as a woman, not so much aging "as a celebrity". Obviously the Hollywood element is there, but it's so absurd and farcical that it really just feels like a playground for the bigger message. None of the indoor spaces in the film feel "real". They're just a stage to watch the human body. More important is the fact that Demi Moore is a bombshell at the start of the film, but she's stopped seeing herself as a person worthy of existing, fame or not (since she's barely acknowledged for her fame in public anyway). The movie is very much shot for the female gaze, which I know is an insane thing to say about a movie with so much female nudity. But (and I say this as a queer woman) the endless shots of butts and boobs and genitals are so egregious that they lose their sexuality. You can feel the self-consciousness in the nudity. It's so relatable it's painful, and while it's not subtle, it really worked for me. I don't think it's a perfect movie. The flashbacks (especially the auditory ones) are too heavy-handed for my taste and I wish more time was spent developing the story through individual scenes as opposed to montages. But it's camp and immersive and really spoke to me and my friends through a lens of womanhood. The other themes are there and they're important, but it's hard to see this movie through another lens (especially when weighed next to Fargeat's other film, Revenge).
I think it works better for Hollywood specifically. If you’re an older woman banker or nurse you’re not going to be ousted from your job because what you’re selling is a skill set. Hollywood is different because a big part of what’s being sold is one’s looks for that context. The movie also goes out of its way to show that some people still care for her even when she’s past her prime - eg the run in she has with the fellow she knew in school who was still enamored with her. But she rejected him because he was beneath her.
@@BlindBisonHow do you interpret her changing her attire, her makeup, and then staying home and eating her feelings away as her thinking he is “beneath her”, really? You gotta work on your media literacy buddy. Also, using “past her prime” to refer to a person is really stupid. Women aren’t cars.
@@confusedpozole406 I was referring to the early scene in the film where they initially met and her response towards him is cold/dismissive. Later her psyche has fallen to pieces and whatever confidence she had has been shot > media literacy Hello fellow redditor lol
The last third of the movie is laugh out loud hilarious. The theater I was in was rolling with laughter still audible despite how loud the blood-spewing scene was.
Motherhood? What are you talking about. You don’t interact with your other self. You are essentially getting a week of your life stolen from this person. How is that motherhood??? You idiots will make any excuse for this trash film
I don't think her flashbacking to prior dialogue is her spoon-feeding the audience, and more just a replication of how these ideas rattle in a woman's head, constantly, whether they like it or not. if it pisses you off that that the dialogue was repeated, I think that's the point she's trying to make. it pisses these women off that this dialogue is constantly repeated in their heads and the spaces they occupy. this is the catalyst of the self hatred
Trust the white boys to come and scream on all platforms how they did not care for a film directed and written by a woman with two female main characters and have the themes of female rage, mother-daughter relationships and nuances of the female experience completely fly over their heads ✨ Always so quick with calling things that women face every single day "simple points" that don't deserve screen time and endless comparisons to male directors! Well, if the men say it's simple, then sure...
Yeah I think it's reasonable to conclude the repeated dialogue is a reflection of the film's subjectivity. The majority of the film is filmed with Elisabeth's perspective in mind and thus those edits are part of her subjective experience, not necessarily to spoonfeed the audience.
Yes and especially during the Elisasue scene where she quite literally can't express herself or those emotions the same way. The film is putting us literally inside her head(s).
@@bunnyrabb1t it was funny brah, I was laughing too :D The whole logic of the plot broke down completely when the story "switched" from Sue=Elizabeth to justify the Elizabeth starting the experiment to Sue =/=Elizabeth to justify them physically fighting and killing one another. Elizabeth would never accept this Faustian deal, never, even if she had no brains whatsoever lol...she would immediately end it the moment she realized her person did not cross over. It DOES insist upon itself and I did not care for it.
So, you're aware that the director is aware of what the movie is. If the movie isn't trying to insist that it's smarter than it is then why are you spending more time dissecting something and insisting on attempting to outsmart and outmaneuver this film? This video is about as self congratulatory as you claim the film is. You can argue that this video is just part of the discourse, but you beat us over the head for 27 minutes about points that don't exist in the plot. You missed the point of the movie. I saw this movie twice already and none of the points you project upon the film exist. The video feels more like you were trying to hit a word limit (watch time as well). This comment isn't toxic. It's just part of the discourse.
This movie does good subtext driven drama in the first half and fun horror in the end, but that inconsistency kills the vibe and leaves the film feeling unresolved and empty. It doesn't really drive anything home in the end, and I dont think Im missing anything. Production and technicals are top shelf, but it goes from feeling like high art to hollywood slop.
@@LaVerdad65I agree that the tonal inconsistencies ultimately detracted from the film but I think that audience disappointment is arising from latching onto the drama and not the campy 80s vibe the film was actually going for (imo). I think that comes from misguided marketing - trying to capitalise on the ‘elevated horror’ trend when it’s actually much more akin to something like The Fly or Re-Animator (and much more enjoyable when you take it in that vein!)
@@nerdatheart It is not good enough to be a horror film, because there are no stakes. You don't fear for anyone. Not the protagonist, or her alter ego, or any secondary characters that are only accidental. We didn't linger enough with the protagonist to feel empathy, and she's driven by Vanity, so its literally just the morbid experience of watching a train wreck.
@@badideabearcub2747 there certainly was a horror element in the film that worked for me. It's the fact that the main character found herself in a situation that had high social stakes. If people see her in her Elizabeth form, with all her new deformities, or if people see Sue when she starts to fall apart. That is what made the movie scary for me. The fact that the main character had to hide herself away from the world as she became more and more deformed, and the fear of how the world would react to her. Of course in the final act, her final form was so outlandish, there isn't really a realistic way for people to react to her, since they don't even know what they're looking at. Are the audience members aware that they're looking at Elizabeth? (Or what is supposed to be Sue- Elizabeth, or whatever)? The final act is the films greatest weakness, since it just resorts to full body horror, but it's just beyond absurdity.
13:40 but it is her.. It's literally the conciousness being transferred and her not wanting to accept her own actions - which is literally the biggest plot hole. No one gets angry at themselves after drinking too much the day before. Made zero sense. Could have been a metaphor for binging, purging and reckless behaviour but wasn't.
It's about deeply seated self-loathing: binging/purging and reckless behavior included as symptoms of this hatred for one's self. Why would you want to specify it down to a metaphor for specific behaviors when its purpose was so much more than that?
if it is the same consciousness, how are they alive and fighting each other at the end. makes zero sense. yes, the film plays both sides, both that it is the same consciousness (to justify the Faustian deal) and then the other side that they can be alive at the same time...which is why it is a comedy film, it was so stupid it was funny
@@takuidnah dude you’re the one tripping. You must have fallen asleep during the last act where she basically does the transferring/fusion process backwards and mixed it all up. It’s not a plot hole whatsoever. It’s clear and obvious that deviating the instructions would create a disastrous result. It’s not hard to use your brain sometimes.
I loved the body horror as i enjoy practical effects but it ironically lacked any substance. It felt like a very flashy music video, good performances and amazing visuals and montages and thats it. Incredibly shallow and very surface level commentary. I was pretty disappointed.
I disagree. Just because the film lacks subtlety and just because it is quite clear in the commentary it's making, by no means makes it "shallow". It's not like we're watching your average slasher with kills and gore thrown in just for the fun of it. "The Substance" is actually quite substantial in what it's saying through visual/auditory story telling. And that's the point: it's body horror, not a splatter film made for the sake of gore itself or a dialogue driven film that asks the viewer to come out of it picking apart what was said. I'm confused as to how anyone could walk out of the theater and come to the conclusion that this film that has so much to say that it's practically screaming at you is "shallow" in any way, shape or form.
As mentioned in the video, the core theme of the film can be summarised from the decaying star in the first 5 mins of screen time. After that it does nothing with the theme, and is incredibly surface level.
If the film's purpose was for me to dislike every character for their lack of depth and introspection, then it succeeded. There's much more than the powerful white male gaze behind the hate of the self that manifests through symptoms like fear of aging, or the pursuit of beauty and perfection in women. The Substance portrait of the human experience lacks substance and force feeds an opinion about issues that are far more universal and complex than what its man-hating feminism wants it to be. Every character in this movie is a villain lacking any plausible emotional state that I could empathize with. When the storyteller thinks that they're far more intelligent than their audience, this is the kind of movie they make.
6:05 i don't think you applied this well, i used it in a thesis and i don't at least see how the belly of the whale fits. she hardly has to do ANY work to get the job. belly of the whale is a frightening test - that is not a frightening test.
About 3 minutes before the very end I thought about leaving, but it kinda won me over in the end by how much it committed to whatever it was going for.
I was about to leave as I was bored senseless. The very end delivered on the body horror but it too lingered for too long. Just meh, wouldnt watch again
The fact none of us understand what it was "going for" by the ending, means you and I should have walked out at any stage, and it wouldn't have been too late to do so
it was gory, it was funny, it was stressful. it had the seven deadly sins woven into it, without making it the main point. there are so many themes beyond wanting to be young and beautiful again. as she was in her final monster form, how much would she had given to be back in her OG form?? we can never accept ourselves as we are, and when we were that hot young thing, we could never relax, we could never allow ourselves to eat, to consume. only to be consumed. be enough. be pretty. when she starts to get rally old and ugly, she finally allows herself to eat and not give af. when she's young and pretty it's like her life depends on it this moment of being praised, and how devastating when her teeths starts falling out, she lost the whole point so dragged herself through hell for. idk man... sometimes i feel like the point of this movie gets lost on men. not saying "only women can watch this movie" not at all everyone can have an opinion on art. but in this specific case, the FEELING of all it all, is only known to women. so i think you're not going to relate much.
This isn't just a "male" take on the movie tbh. This guy's a very bitter critic. I used to like his channel a lot until I realised he doesn't sympathise with characters or try to understand the bigger narrative. He just cares about how stories made him feel. He's smart at times, but his analysis of movies is often immature and driven by bias.
The guys in the comment section have me absolutely rolling with laughter at how confident they are that the movie has no merits when they clearly just don't get it
@@MENACE-km6bd I honestly lost respect for him during an A24 tier list video when he dismissed the Room's merits for being poorly structured, the climax occurs too early and then it drags on, instead of engaging with the fact that the film is about both the kidnapping AND the emotionally taxing aftermath. If he didn't like the film, that's fine, but the way he dismissed it made it clear to me that he was acting in bad faith.
@@MENACE-km6bdomg me too! i thought i was just not as smart/enjoying the wrong films but it’s so true he’s become a bit more bitter since i first started watching :/
Trust the men to come and scream on all platforms how they did not care for a film directed and written by a woman with two female main characters and also have the themes of female rage, mother-daughter relationships and nuances of the female experience completely fly over their heads ✨ Always so quick with calling things that women face every single day "simple points" that don't deserve screen time and endless comparisons to male directors! Well, if the men say it's simple, then sure... The last scene was actually heartbreaking to watch, I cried in the theatre while the men sitting beside me giggled at the blood splattering and the boob falling out of her. You focus too much on the "ASMR" and visual aspect of the body horror scenes and completely miss the allegedly simplistic point behind it - you are SUPPOSED TO feel it, the weight of it, the sensory overload, the expectations, the voices in your head, the derealization from your perfected image. It was a devastatingly sad scene. The director did everything for the audience (including men) to FEEL it, yet we are out here analyzing the references and saying it was too much
I loved this film. It didn't tread new territory but it was an exciting visual, cerebral experience, the audio and sparse dialogue were so smart, excellent casting and performances as well. The commodification and discarding of the female body is something men don't experience so i fear what this film conveys won't really resonate with most male viewers.
@@SUD8800 I'm a man and I thought this movie was absolutely brilliant. I'm considering seeing it a 3rd time at this point. I don't think a man could've told this story as well or pushed the envelope. The finale is very powerful. The final cry for help was hard to see. The very last moment of returning to the star where it all began was great. I just thought it was funny that the script for this video was probably 5x longer than the one from the movie and I didn't learn anything new. Just a bunch of talk. I used to really like this channel and now I don't know why I'm still subscribed.
My male boss at work loved it, he's seen it twice and plans to see it again soon. I thought Moore was worthy of an Oscar nomination and the young actress was impressive but I didn't care for it. I do respect that it's something new and not another sequel or Marvel film but I had many problems with the film. With all due respect, I'm getting tired of this "of course MEN don't like it" narrative, it's getting old and offensive.
You could also choose to interpret it as Elisabeth's moment of self-actualization. She and her other self are together, not trying to kill each other, and when they're rejected by the crowd, their hate for themself is now directed externally. Coralie Fargeat is taking her satirical target and having Elisabeth spray blood over it. The fantasy of being applauded are the thoughts of pride and self love that she wants to have. Despite the intrusive thoughts she has, I think it's very significant that Elisabeth is still spinning at the end and nobody was able to stop her. There's absolutely tragedy to the scene too (especially as it moves on to the final scene), but based on Fargeat's interviews where she talks about the film and her influences, I really think she wants us to laugh at the absurdity of it and give us a sense of catharsis, as if a revolution has begin, while also effectively communicating the tragedy of it all.
I wanted to have your experience, where weight is given to the subtext. But the film just gets too absurdist and too comedy horror. Comedic in the same way many horror movies are. I think you're the one who's not picking up on that. This movie really does not have the "substance" that youre pretending it has. But I did pick up on the messages that you refer too, the movie just doesnt do a good job of driving it home. By the end it just feels like a fun horror movie
This movie is a gem. I hope Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Coralie Fargeat, the makeup and special effects teams get a lot of nominations and recognition.
Horror films seldom get recognition for their performances despite many amazing examples of them. If the makeup fx and editing is overlooked, I will protest the awards.
@@F5BOTD Exactly, or one from the Twilight Zone. Not enough substance, no pun intended, for a standalone movie. For me it fell like a stripped down version of the Portrait of Dorian Gray.
I was so disappointed by The Substance. It had me for a while but it just KEPT GOING. For me, if it had wrapped itself up around the point where Elizabeth morphed into the old hag, I would've been much happier. It just kept going and going after that. I was bored! I felt that after that point, I was just disrespected as an audience member. You wouldn't think you could get bored at such a grotesque movie.
Indeed, The third act was unnecessary. It felt like the director threw every horror movie from the 1980´s into the Mix: The elephant man, Carrie, The puke scene from Stand By Me, The Evil Dead, The Thing, The Blob, The Fly, etc...
Disrespected as an audience member? You sound so pretentious it’s actually sad. Your comment reads more to the fact you just didn’t understand the movie whatsoever. I know it’s hard for stupid people to put themselves in other people’s shoes, especially in movies, but damn. I feel sorry for your lack of understanding.
To me, so far, this is the best movie of the year. It felt like I imagine people felt when Peter Jackson's Braindead first came out. It manages to be funny, clever, and absolutely disgusting, and I'm here for it. In Braindead, two zombies have intercourse which results in a baby zombie; I never stopped to ask "wait a minute, how is that possible?" because the tone of the film is so clearly cartoony and satirical. Same here; The Substance is leaning into horror comedy's generic conventions, fully embracing them. In these days, where cinematic "elevation" supposedly consists in creating distance from the horror genre, I found The Substance quite refreshing.
I thought this was super fun and there are some subtle messages as well. *Spoilers* When the doctor gives Liz the note that says his life changed, he never said for the better, but it shows how her desperation for change in her life led her to indeed change it but for the worst. I also think there is a message that you cannot have both accolades and success/ merit behind you AND youth at the same time. Her roses she originally gets say we loved you, and thank her for all the good years which highlights her age but also shows she has proved herself and cemented success while her younger self gets roses with a note that says everyone WILL love you. She is good looking but has done nothing so nobody really loves her yet and she can’t have both.
This movie tried I can also appreciate a horror-style fable, as opposed to more grounded sci-fi body horror like The Fly, or The Thing - I like Demi Moore appearing, in horror as well This just wasn't a compelling horror, despite unique presentation I appreciate the themes, they just weren't realised well in this movie through the disfigurement stages, or story imo The ending was almost comedy (aside from the face at the end, that was kinda cool)
Yeah... I kinda came away from this feeling nothing, I was annoying at the constant replication of other films. It's so unsubtle in it's messaging it becomes boring. The amount of people online praising this is unbelievable - for a film called The Substance, the film certainly has none... its all style. Very, very disappointing. You mention within the video a few of the filmography she rips off, what I saw: Videodrome The Fly Persona The Elephant Man Society The Thing Requiem for a Dream Black Swan Sunset Boulevard Dead Ringers Hot Fuzz AntiViral The Portrait of Dorian Gray Jekyll and Hyde The Shining 2001 Vertigo Titane Beau Is Afraid
It seems this movie doesn’t resonate with men at all, this is an overall shitty take with good points. I respect your opinion but I can’t help but find you patronising, you don’t seem to have respect for any of this movie, all you do is reference other films for the majority of this video, if the references are meant to be so “obvious” and heavy handed on purpose, then why beat the point to death.
My boss at work is a guy and he loved it, his male friends loved it, he's seen it twice and can't wait to see it again. It has a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, Weniei Ma (a woman) gave it a "rotten" review, Eileen Jones (a woman) gave it a "rotten" review, Susan Granger (a woman) gave it a "rotten" review, several, several male critics gave it glowing reviews. It has a 70% fresh and many positive reviews are given by men.
If you dislike the movie, as I do as well, why would you have respect for it? Making such a long video with a lot of explanation about why he doesn’t like it is respect enough. Disreprectful to me is calling a long video a „shitty take“. Which take exactly?
@@ChromeKong the movie was a bold swing for a second feature, casting Demi Moore to portray the role even more so, he didn’t really acknowledge any of that. I don’t remember what’s in the video at this point but once again I respect his opinion and yours! But to pick apart a movie because it references other films so obviously is a shitty take to me. If you enjoy this guys opinions more power to you 🔥
I'm a man and I thought this movie was a masterpiece. Hilarious, tragic, surprisingly emotional, and viciously smart about its satirical targets. I related so much to Demi Moore's character. You don't need to wear makeup to know what it's like to feel unattractive and impossible to "fix". When the camera eyes her body up and down, I immediately recognize the gaze that I have when I look at my imperfections. And yeah Taylor used to have some interesting, insightful takes (still has snippets of them here and there), but to me he's come to represent the cynical "film bro" who wants desperately to have a unique, controversial voice and opinion, at the expense of anything, pun intended, "substantive".
I never checked out while watching this film and I don't think The Substance is trying to make any sort of point about trying to "find the value in older things". This is a movie about internalized self-hatred and the consequences of that along with the perils of addiction. Although the stage is Hollywood, there's something relatable here for everyone that is not class related. It's big and boisterous and in your face and I think it's designed to bring out a strange sort of empathy in ALL of its viewers. This includes men, most of whom who review the film can viscerally feel what Elisabeth is experiencing as she's tearing her face off when she is preparing for her date. One of the things I loved about the film is that its messages are obvious. In a climate that seems to value films more for their complexity and the viewers ability to tease out the meaning, "The Substance" is right there blasting what it's trying to say straight to your face: just like how society and the media are constantly bombarding us with messages about how we (as women) are never good enough, pretty enough, young enough, etc. under the guise of "self improvement" and the barrage of products designed to somehow "make us better". I think the movie is timeless in that it speaks to every generation: past, present and future. From women breaking their ribs and mutilating their internal organs by forcing themselves into corsets to pumping themselves up with Ozempic to lose weight and beyond. Furthermore, I think the film pays great respect to Cronenberg (as well as several other directors) without trying to actually become them. There's just too much to say here and an opinion is an opinion but I really disliked your commentary here. As for Harmony Korine, I'd say "Spring Breakers" is a lot like "The Substance" in style and visual storytelling: just not nearly as good.
Love the horror genre but this movie wasn’t for me. I was interested at first and enjoyed the opener then they lost me as it went on. Some of the shots/framing/effects were pretty good, but I got bored after Sue’s introduction scenes. I guessed pretty much everything that was going to happen.
Brandon cronenberg wouldve made a far superior movie had he directed this. His movies, although over the top and perhaps punishing, take the world they live in seriously. Something I wish this story would’ve done.
i don't understand what all of you had with the shrimps. i was watching the waitress butt and him eating the shrimps was low class, but that was it. there is lots of other stuff thats gross. this didn't register with me.
@@oooodaxteroooo th-cam.com/video/RSTN0m2n6AM/w-d-xo.htmlsi=_oO1IEoK_gRTiHIN : if you don't find this "noteworthy" or disgusting (especially within the context of the conversation, I have no idea what to say to you.
From my understanding, it’s a film that argues for the maintenance of borders, stating that these things have an essential nature to them and shouldn’t deviate from the path laid out for them. Body horror, like a lot of horror genre, argues for the maintenance of the status quo, the deformed body representing an unwelcome change that should be avoided at all costs and serves as a warning.
Horror monsters reflect the cultural anxieties of their time, not reinforce them. They’re a depiction of the way the status quo others those who do not fit within it - to the point of literally dehumanising them. The only horror genre that could be said to be genuinely normative is the Slasher with its virginal Final Girl trope
this is absolutely not true of nearly all body horror; the so-called master himself cronenberg has said that he despises the term and is often aiming for something much more emotionally complicated than simple shock and horror. it's pretty evident in a bunch of his movies, but ESPECIALLY in crimes of the future. the quote that's perhaps more appropriate for contextualising cronenberg and those who took the right lessons from him is actually his open support of trans people, where he says that the way we choose to change our bodies is a form of ecstatic art, and he's god damn right
I gave up the minute he showed the graph of the monomyth. that was an unbelievable stretch and literally rearranges and ignores multiple significant plot points just to try to make the point that still makes absolutely no sense. This film very much does not fit into the structure of the monomyth and he gives away his own personal biases about story structure by saying that the monomyth is "basically universal and should apply to any story". The monomyth is a bullshit concept based on western male ideas of story structure, Fargeat pushes against this story structure with the monstro elisasue and killing elisabteh beats, she doesn't ever return, she falls deeper and deeper into her addiction to youth and being perfect until it destroys her. Killing Elisabeth isn't just the refusal of return that will ultimately be wrapped up neatly and taking the substance a second time is absofuckinglutely not any kind of rescue. To try to wrap that kind of tragedy into a neat Joseph Campbell ass story structure is to completely ignore what it's actually trying to say.
The extermination note said "we are sorry you didn't appreciate your experience with substance." Not disappointment. The failure of the user to respect the balance. All that to say that I didn't get that read at all. I don't think she was say "lol u mad" to the audience, I think youre reaching for shit that's there man. It's pretty basic, it's just the part of the film where the narrator rubs in the lesson that she fucked up, but in the same false senserity that they've been subjected to the ebtire film by all of the men. You fucked it up, Demi Moore and other girl. That's it.
'The Substance' impressed me as a convoluted 'male sex fantasy', albeit a perverse one, disguised as an 'intellectual' film, which it certainly wasn't. It says nothing about the ideal woman…in fact it says nothing about women at all, other than equating copulation with the essence of womanhood. The film never rose above a comic book level of culture. I feel the same way about 'Dogtooth', and in fact, most modern pseudo-intellectual films. The Pre-Code film-makers were honest about their motive: to cram as much titillation into a film as possible - to ensure back-sides on seats. Today's Pharisaical film-makers, have devised countless pretexts and mental contortions, to justify the same dubious practices as the Pre-Code filmmakers. Furthermore, if it is now an imperative that 'sex' has to be at the fulcrum of all their artistic endeavors, it still hasn't occurred to them, that you can produce an arty piece of cinema about sex, without resorting to the exploitation of the feminine form. Mick La Salle's piece on 'Poor Things' is worth reading, as he presents a watertight case against the film's preposterous smugness. How can a sex-ploitaion film effectively do battle with…sex-ploitation? How can actresses who radically conform to beauty standards (via plastic surgery) be integral exemplars for young women? Why would any integral actress participate in, and promote, a sex-ploitation/Roman Colloseum flick? Will this movie stop women of all ages, from the natural desire, of wanting to appear beautiful in public? Will a sexy girl running around in her underwear make viewers think differently about sexual assault? The trailer for ‘The Substance’ promises titillation galore for teenage boys and dirty old men, under the guise of ‘social critique’. How far is this tactic from the films produced by the American Social Hygiene Association, at the beginning of the 20th century? The males will leave this film with ‘flesh on the mind’ and the females with ‘cosmetics on the mind’. Which ideology or cause, could justify prostituting images of a woman’s nubile contours, to over a billion viewers? Successful actresses build their career on character, rather than contours (i.e. Angela Lansbury). Filmmakers who genuinely love women, provide opportunities for their feminine strength of character to shine. Misogynistic filmmakers expose bodily contours and then proceed to tear them apart for the viewer’s perverse delight. My favourite Demi Moore film is ‘One Crazy Summer’. I would like to see more films like ‘Howard’s End’ or ‘Trust’ where the women are given something edifying to do… While the filmmakers are patting themselves on the back, for simply reinforcing ‘the male gaze’, here are some valid criticisms: “But for all its feminist diatribes, The Substance is still a movie that is 80 percent extreme close-ups of Margaret Qualley’s arse. In nearly every other scene, the camera lovingly pans over her spandex-clad exterior, in sequences that are shot like ‘90s Viagra commercials” (Inverse.com). "The Substance’s presentation is as shallow as the very thing it’s critiquing. There’s no compassion, and certainly no catharsis - just more hagsploitation and a sense of déjà vu." (Hannah Strong) "An overuse of stale horror conventions in an already predictable plot-combined with decades-old, thoroughly unchallenging ideas about women’s relationships to their bodies-leads to a film that claims to support its protagonist, while treating her like the butt of the joke at every turn...I will not deny that Margaret Qualley is great to look at, but Fargeat undermines her film’s satirical point by catering to the same male gaze that the script claims to despise so deeply. Fargeat isn’t quite sure what she wants to say about women’s relationships to their body and images of their body, so she falls back on simply showing us that Margaret Qualley is hot.” (Paste Magazine) 'After two hours and 20 minutes of flamboyantly repulsive variations on this well-worn theme, even the strongest-stomached and most feminist of viewers could be excused for muttering, We get it already." (Slate Magazine)
love when people use “difficult” words to sound intelligent lol you can do your review without being pretentious my dude I agree with some points you made tho
this was the most predictable movie i've ever seen where I wasn't bored or insulted by it. i was constantly on the edge of my seat waiting for the eventual pay off. i appreciated your marxist critique but this was still my 2nd favorite movie of the year.
are you hinting at the fact that he likes to hear himself talk and smearing people with bullshit bingo for pleasure? ;) thank god, he didn't make the movie :)
Well unfortunately your film making is some of the most cringe shit I’ve seen, so I don’t want to hear anything about intelligence from you when you really thought those were good enough to upload
This is probably the most fulfilling video on this movie that I've watched, despite that I disagree with you. I can understand why you didn't like it because of its directness, but that's exactly what I liked about it. A film doesn't need to be impenetrable for it to have a strong thesis (I thought Titane was a wet fart of a film that had nothing to say) , and while the film lacks complexity in its discussion of the topic, I still found it to be really effective at exploring the antagonistic relationship we take on with our own bodies. I typically hate movies that hold the audience's hand, but the instances you cited of this felt more like an attempt to reflect Elisabeth's inner world in the exaggerated tone of the movie. I dunno, it just really worked for me for some reason
Oh and I also really thought the presentation was spectacular. Her creativity with the match cuts and the visual symmetry was just so much fun to watch. Not to mention the energy of the editing. Again, direct, but not basic. I'm kinda struggling to imagine a version of the film that feels "older" as you described
this film is about body dysmorphia, beauty standards, and what it’s like to be a woman in a this western capitalist society. it’s over the top to highlight the feelings real women (and others) often have. it was very true to plenty of people’s experiences and you’re actively invalidating that with this pretentious, ill willed video 👎🏽
Shut the fuck up. I have severe body dysmorphia. This film is not above criticism because it is about body dysmorphia. It is a cheap, shallow aggressively tasteless garbage that tries too hard at every turn to be as gross and disgusting as possible
@@olred3870 he is absolutely right. in first 30 minutes we know everything we need to know, the next 2 hours is just repetition of the same message and in case u missed something you will get explanation in the next scene anyway, it is insulting to intelligence and viewer, the movie is for those who consume cheap mainstream crap daily which is already unwatchable satire of itself, but most of mainstream enjoyers need this over the top crap of the same substance to get the message. but the problem is not just that. the dialogues are horrible, the characters are repulsive and have no personality, how do you even care about them? the only horror in the movie is harvey eating the shrimps that's the only scene it made me puke, the rest was borefest, the ending was funny though and it even had some hidden messages, also the director is clearly very talented she built up nice suspense in first 30 minutes, cinematography was great, too bad the over the top cliches were jumping out already in those 30 mins and totally took over the rest of the movie, where there was just nothing memorable anymore. In other words the message itself is not the problem it's how it is delivered and it is just done in the dumbest way possible, you can only like it if you actually like the things it criticizes, well I don't, so too bad, movie sucked.
I think the end was totally unnecessary...it ended for me when her teeth fell out in the elevator. Cutting it there and leaving us to imagine what she might do next or if she's going to survive would have been much better imo
I'm not entirely happy with the current trend of criticism regarding movie messages being 'too on the nose'. Whatever one thought of 'Don't Look Up', and I'm speaking as a fully paid up member of the working class', whilst the metaphor of that film might have seemed clumsy, its 'on the noseness' was precisely the point for me. Because what it was saying, fundamentally obvious messaging or not, is still precisely true; and us humans, considering the current state of things, do need to be reminded what types of folks are running the show methinks. The same accusation of obviousness was aimed at 'Triangle of Sadness', but again, to me, it felt like a necessary and wildly entertaining reminder of the ruling elites' current predilection for GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). I've recently revisited 'The Menu' too (a film I initially dismissed and didn't much like) in response to the fantastic 'Horror Vanguard' podcast's deeper look at the role of service workers and elite industrial complexes that are not 'Hello Fresh' or 'Better Help' or 'Aura' (and how absurdist and ironic and sad is it that you have too to repeat the message in this very video you're making, but which you shouldn't be judged badly for, but is also sad for its conventionality - ?). I suspect that 'The Menu's' perspective might suggest how illogical a class analysis might be in regard to 'The Substance.' 'The Substance', for all its humour (and it is funny) was an explicitly sad film to me; in that it made me sad to see what my daughter calls 'the extent to which women can hate themselves in the pursuit of beauty.' When you, like me, as a man, pontificate on the excesses and repetition of the point in 'The Substance', and its formal absurdist qualities for the sake of its point, I'm reminded of when Anna Biller's 'The Love Witch' was compared by many critics to the work of Russ Meyer, and Biller asked the question, 'Is this me, my camera, and my attitude towards my actresses? Really?' (See Kyle Kalgren's 'Brows Held High' video essay on this for reference). Of course, I don't know your take on Tarantino's work re when a director explicitly references other film-makers, but I don't see him j'accused of this much, but instead rather celebrated when, in my view, he really should be criticised for his lack of imagination in that regard.. Anna Biller rightly spoke of 'The Love Witch' being a sad film - that its protaogonist's journey culminates in utter sadness. I felt much the same for the 'Sparkles', despite the shits and giggles of the maximalism in 'The Substance'. The final plea of 'Monstro Elisasue' called to mind 'Carrie's' horror at the peak of prom as the bucket of blood is poured over her. After all, this combined 'Sue' is attending the highlight of her career, the New Year's Eve special - so why wouldn't the bad blood visited upon women be returned in spades. Like a once wonderful, also rabid misogynist musician once said, 'There's joy in repetition.' Anyway, these are some of my feelings after having seen 'The Substance' earlier today. Still, I have more to say this: I enjoyed Julia Ducournau's 'Raw', but it did have a nasty 'Kill your gays' denouement. And while it's probably true that the same question wouldn't necessarily be asked of a male character, I do wonder at the mass killing Alexia commits in 'Titane'. It's rageful in response to societal ills I guess, but it's never really addressed after the fact. So yeah, I didn't find 'The Substance' thrilling; it made me laugh quite a bit, provoked a lot of thoughts (I've not even fully comprehended the role that food plays in the film, but I know its function is vital in respect of women's self-image), and it made me very very sad, much in the way I felt sad at the scene in 'Challengers' when Tashi, fully understanding the consequences of her injury, cried under the tree. Sadness is universal. And scary, And sometimes boring. And hopelessly conventional. It's like 'Moonlight' and like moonlight. And beautiful, like 'Monstro Elisasue' calling to the coventional with her conventional plea - 'It's still me.' Anyways, mostly love your work, although, and I think you've hinted at this before, you do come across sometimes as resenting what you do. I'm in the UK so I never had to worry about college fees, and health care bills, so it must be hard sometimes I guess to put all your brilliance to something as unpredictable and variable as the old algorithm. So love and kind regards to you, and I sincerely hope you get to where you need. ps - I've not seen anyone refer to Brian Yuzna's 'Society' in respect of 'The Substance', which it did put me in mind of, but I've not seen in years. That might be a frame worth examining. x
My issue is the reviews that call this film feminist. Feminism is about improving life for women in general and challenging conventional thinking. Elizabeth totally believes and buys into conventional beauty standards. She only is angry that she no longer benefits. She also only wants to improve her on life. She has no community and no politics or philosophy.
a depiction of a character that holds certain beliefs does not mean those beliefs are what the film is imparting thematically. when people call the film "feminist" they aren't saying elizabeth herself is a feminist.
Also portraying patriarchy as a bunch of disgusting villains with disney levels of flatness is not doing the complex issues any favors. And yeah, it’s fine that it doesn’t, but then please stop calling this a feminist movie or some kind of art movie. There is nothing in it than the most superficial critique of the most obvious cases of patriarchal abuse like Epstein/Weinstein but as a viewer I’m not invited to think and understand anything for myself. Therefore I can easily disconnect without gaining any deeper understanding or a feeling of urgency.
@@ChromeKong It's still feminist thought because it's literally making fun of the patriarchy and those who uphold the system. Satire doesn't need to be deep and nuanced and complex. Coralie Fargeat is making an over the top horror movie, so of course the system is going to be portrayed in an over the top way. It's Body Horror Barbie (and Greta Gerwig would agree since she adjudicated Fargeat the winner of Best Screenplay). Like, nobody wants to sit and hear a more measured Dennis Quaid describe his relationship with his mother and how that impacted his treatment of women. It's a silly, angry, body horror movie with a heightened sense of style. And yeah, it's feminist too.
Thank god I finally found someone who didn’t care for the film- I haven’t even watched the video yet, I was just surprised to see someone not giving this film a blowjob like everyone else
This movie is one of the bumbest shit I have ever seen in my life. All the good that this movie had going was for nothing as the last 30 or so minutes at the end was incredible stupid. The good: cinematography, acting, idea, top notch body horror. The bad: oh my! The bad! That stupid stupid ending! We are supposed to believe that a Cronenberg creation could reach the podium without security noticing?!?! Beyond stupid. But it goes even more doen the drain, the reaction from the audience: first, they don't notice the alien im front of them....then when she reveals herself THEY START TO ATTACK HER!!!!!.....we reach a new low if this is considered a masterpiece.
yh i didn't really like this film, granted I'm not a big fan of body horror anyways. But I didn't know anything about this film going in initially. I think everything was just a lot for me to process, I had a bit of a censory overload. I know people will either love or hate this film for its subtext, I'm aligning mre with Taylors views. But I'm just not a big fan of that kind of thing. It was mean-spirited and honestly just fucking disgusting to look at. Which is something I'm not actively seeking in film, to that extent. but of course those are just just my thoughts :)
I agree, the most frustrating part of this film is how it refuses to abide by its own logic. Why does Elisabeth use the substance? If she gets absolutely nothing out of it, and her other self constantly is screwing her over then WHY DOES SHE CONTINUE TO DO IT?
@@reng935 Here's the thing "They are one" sounds nice and tidy, until you actually watch the movie and see that neither of them recall the other's experiences. Yes, their actions have consequences for the other, but they are very much their own separate entity making their own selfish decisions. They do not have a joint consciousness. Elisabeth does not share Sue's experience. She has no idea what Sue is doing for her week+. She is not getting to indulge in her youth again. So my question persists, what does Elisabeth get out of the substance?
@@soodhooku what do you mean “she thinks they are?” If you had a mini-me idealized version of yourself out in the world, but you have no idea what it does and it only makes your life worse, what motive is there for you to keep on with this situation?
Dude, they're the same person. She's screwing herself over. That's the point. She keeps doing it because she benefits. That's not the film "not abiding by its own logic", it's a character not being logical. And characters don't act logically because people are not logical. There are countless people every day who spend their savings on plastic surgery that at best don't last and at worst become straight up body horror shit. In real life. That's what is happening here
It’s a 7/10 for me. It was extremely fun to watch as someone who didn’t know anything about it, but I also see lots of plotholes and some obvious continuity errors that stick out to me.
just got home from seeing the movie and you said my thoughts about it almost exactly! i was initially really on board with its tone and what it was going for in the beginning but as it kept going it really just wore me down with how on the nose everything was. idk i thought the concept was cool and i loved the body horror but the movie as a whole just didn't do it for me
I watched an interview with the writer and all her commentary about the movie was so surface level that i dont believe she was the only writer. Ive watched dozens of reviews and nobody gets the film . I find that odd being how simple the movie is. Time to start a channel
I think this film is a fantastic satire of shallow feminist critique of beauty standards - but I don’t know how intentional that was! Casting Demi Moore as an old hag is brilliant because the woman is stunning. “Let’s make a movie about how beauty standards harm women where everyone is gorgeous and one of the horrors she faces is spending too long putting on makeup and can’t go on a date.” Brilliant. No notes. 10/10. For me it perfectly captured how ridiculous and outdated a lot of Feminist 101 critique is. Like the fact that Elisabeth/Sue are starting in an AEROBICS TV SHOW?! What is this, the 80s? And Elisabeth’s lowest point being the food binge - like I think it’s supposed to be ridiculous! The plot is what SOCIETY imagines to be the scariest thing that can happen to a woman I genuinely think it works so well as a satire of the exact people saying “This role was perfect for Demi, she’s so brave for doing it!” without realising they’re literally reinforcing the selfsame standards that are being lampooned
I also love how there are women in the cs are giving you your lashing for this preposterous take no one asked you for. Just a whole bunch of word salads to intellectualize your misogyny.
And no one asked you to comment dummy. He presented his critique in a well formatted way, and the fact you are frothing at the mouth saying he is a misogynist says a lot about your intelligence
You are one of the most pretentious commentators in TH-cam that I love to hate, only a smidge deep enough for shallow audiences like me to share the pretence. I am subscribing.
You held back in your critique of this ripoff to other, superior movies. By the way, there was no visual prowess to this mimesis. The cinematography RIPPED OFF, a countless-endless amount of better films, The Shining, Excorsist, Carrie etc. etc. etc. Ad nauseum. Filmmakers like this can only exist post Siskel and Ebert and in the hey-day of pop-culture at your finger tips - youtube. There is ABSOLUTELY NO originality in this crappy movie. This film once again showcases the mediocrity of the women directors who've been vetted, usually because of NEPOTISM. Is it a coincidence that The Substance, like Titane (a RIPOFF OF CRASH), Barbie (a goofy, pop-culture, pastiche, color-coordinated rip off of just about everything) or Saltburn (a RIPOFF OF MANY MOVIES, ALL SUPERIOR INCLUDING THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY) is OVERHYPED simply because they're WOMEN? No. There's no coincidence. Besides the ridiculous theme: "men force women into subservient roles, for their youthfulness and beauty standards. (how original)," which is so trite and not defensible, since so many women themselves shallowly worship youth, beauty and celebrities (just look at Instagram - really a phone app designed for women who scroll envying each other). Women deserve better movie than shite like this. Stop pulling punches. If you're going to strike, strike hard, damnit.
This movie was an absolute trainwreck. Some great tits n' ass and a few laughs, but this might be the worst film I've seen this year 👏🏼 Literally any pile of crap can win a film award these days 😂
This movie starts out with a fly in a glass of wine. The time is now but everything is old Hollywood. It's an homage to the fly, and a statement about the beauty industry and objectivication of women mixed in with the concept of aging and death. It's not that complicated
can we just have fun? must we be so serious? i just think it obviously wasn’t for you, and that’s ok! not everyone likes everything, nothing truly is objectively good to everyone. but that’s not the movies fault. correlating ur own dislike for it as a fault of the movie or the director is stupid. and pretentious. like ur mustache
That’s one of the problems with being a critic. I write a review for every film I watch, but don’t consider myself a critic. Just a movie lover, I try and focus on what I like in what I watch
Every other thing about this movie is praising it, be quiet no one is saying you can’t have fun dummy. You found so much worth in this movie about appearances and critique his mustache, choke on your spit you moron
I agree with you, very shallow storyline + the most annoying was the young/older versions seemed two different people and didnt remember what the other one was doing.
I think that’s how it works. That’s why the instructions really tried to reinforce that they were the same, because they don’t really share the same mind.
@@ninjaeddy1717 with certain changes it could have been great. As it is now, it was aesthetic and opportunity to admire Demi Moore who was more charismatic than yonung actress.
@@ninjaeddy1717 If they don't share the same mind how did the older version of the male nurse in the beginning know who Demi was when they both were sitting in the restaurant. Plot hole after plot hole in this dumpster fire trash movie
This movie looked pretentious just from the trailer lol “they replace the old actresses!!!” We yeah. The only business they keeps those that are to enfeebled to do anything is the government.
I just saw this movie and I’m confused about the point of the substance. I thought Demi Moore would be able to live through and experience the same things as her “better self” but that’s not the case at all. They are two different people. They don’t even share the same memories, because it’s clear that Elisabeth and Sue don’t have any idea of what the other is doing while the other one is unconscious. So what does Demi Moore’s character gain from this? This makes the substance completely pointless.
What she gains is something she points at the end, she still sees Sue as a part of her. Her triumphs she feels as though are her own. I think in many ways it's almost like when parents live vicariously through their children. Sue on the other hand only sees her as a resource to be consumed.
I saw it as they would do the same if the roles were reversed. So one half gets all the glory but the price of that is the others suffering. saw someone say it's like when you act differently when you're happy and thriving compared to when you're suffering, but now there's a toxic degree of separation.
They are not 2 different people, they are one. They are 2 split personalities of the same consciousness. When it's Elisabeth it fully believes it's Elisabeth, and when it's Sue it fully believes it's Sue. If you go back to when Elisabeth first took the activator and Sue was born, it's quite clear that initially the consciousness was still in the Elisabeth personality from the way she reacts to seeing her own body in a state on the floor, and the fact the she still retains the knowledge of what to do after activating. Over time she develops a unique personality as Sue and the 2 personalities split apart into what seems like 2 distinctly different people, but this isn't the case, in reality Sue is still Elisabeth but she doesn't want to be Elisabeth, she resents that part of herself and hates her old body and the fact she even has to go back into it at all. Because of this she breaks the rules multiple times, consequently ruining Elizabeth's original body and causing Elisabeth to also resent and hate her younger self for not caring about her original body and being selfish, but in reality it's literally all this one consciousness making decisions that best suit whichever body it's in at the time, even if it negatively affects the other. I see how you could feel it's 2 separate people, at times it certainly seems that way but it's expressly stated that they are one, and many things in the movie confirm this fact. As for the part when Sue wakes up after Elisabeth attempts to terminate her, I really have no idea at that point lmao, did she gain her own consciousness in that moment? Or is one consciousness controlling 2 different bodies and personalities simultaneously? Either way this movie is absolutely nuts in the best way possible and I love it, hopefully you can get more from it on a second watch with these things in mind.
@@BeanMate The problem I’m having is the “You are one” plot. Because they are not “one” we see that in the movie. Sue needs Elisabeth to live but Elisabeth doesn’t need Sue to live…so how are they connected? They don’t even share the same memories. Elisabeth only knew about Sue’s one night stand because the guy left a note and his motorcycle helmet at her apartment. We also see scenes where Sue is telling Elisabeth’s unconscious body about her success. So if they are connected why doesn’t Elisabeth already know all of this? Wouldn’t it make more sense if we actually saw Elisabeth waking up remembering and feeling all the things Sue did and for a while it makes her happy but slowly she stops wanting to switch back to her older self? To me it looks like Sue is just a parasite that feeds off of Elisabeth to maintain her youth and beauty but again what does Elisabeth gain from this?
@@s.w.d4010 I'm not sure you're watching the same movie as me lmao, because you're saying we see that they aren't one in the movie, and I think that it quite explicitly shows and tells you the exact opposite, that they are one, and if you don't understand that even after reading my previous comment then I'm not sure how is best to explain it to you. Maybe try thinking about it this way, have you seen the movie "Split"? In that movie, James McAvoy plays a character called Kevin that has 24 different distinct personalities living within him, and the personality that is controlling the body at any given time is decided by a thing called "the light". Each personality has their turn in the light, and when not in the light the other personalities don't know/can't hear whatever the current personality in the light is doing/saying. I think it works similarly to that in The Substance, because as I said in my previous comment, I don't think it's separate consciousnesses that we're dealing with, but split personalities of the same consciousness, and using "the light" makes it easier to see why they wouldn't remember what the other body had done each time they switch. When Elisabeth first becomes Sue it's made quite clear that it's still Elisabeth's personality inside of a new body, but as time goes on and Elisabeth lives as Sue, she starts to develop a unique personality as Sue and this is where the split occurs, because while inside of Sue the consciousness doesn't feel like it is Elisabeth anymore and makes decisions based on what's best for Sue, not caring about the consequences for the other body at all, and when it's inside of Elisabeth it can't relate to Sue, it sees and feels the damage that Sue has done to it's original body and tries to blame Sue, complaining to the substance company that Sue isn't respecting the balance when in reality it is Elisabeth's consciousness doing these things to itself but is in denial about who is to blame for her horrific new body.
As for "what does Elisabeth gain from this?" Obviously nothing, in fact she literally loses everything, but prior to taking the substance there was no way for her to know that would be the outcome, it was advertised to her in a much nicer way than what actually plays out, so asking what she gained is kinda silly because she was quite clearly intentionally mislead into thinking she was gaining her youth back, when in reality all she gained was a split personality disorder and her own death lmao.
I don’t think that she ever pays for the substance or that her access to it is tied to class. The guy who brings her in who she meets again at the diner works as a nurse. I think it’s supposed to feel more fable, like in that it’s a force she doesn’t understand but bc of her class feels she hubristically feels she can control
It’s true we don’t see her pay or anything, but the privilege and cost of cosmetology is a huge aspect of celebrity image and one I think is worth considering in a story whose entire subject is celebrity image. Regarding the nurse, I kind of assumed he was in on the enterprise and this was some sort of commentary on medical exploitation of celebrities (eg the Kanye/nitrous situation), but ultimately you’re right that this doesn’t REALLY hold up as a class commentary. My point is more so that it foregoes outward commentary like that (we never actually learn about who’s exploiting her, by design) because any potential material to make broader points is funneled back into the specific subject of body image. Good or bad, that’s what the movie is doing.
It’s also true that the world of the movie is intentionally abstract and closed-off, but I don’t think it’s the point of a fable to NOT make us think about the real world. Again, Quaid’s character is named Harvey! Surely we’re supposed to be making some connections.
@@TaylorJWilliams I just mean the substance is not a thing of the world of the film, it has no creator or logic to its application beyond the trickster like humiliation of its subject (see: obvious warnings, the forcing of the subject to bow to get their neatly drip fed food to remind them of their place, personification as one voice instead of a corporate apparatus). The media org Harvey runs doesn’t force her onto it or have any relationship with the substance, instead they exist as external pressures that take a back seat to the primary externalized conflict within herself. Everything she loses she takes from herself and the substance only raises the stakes.
Like even the first time she takes the extra spinal fluid is just her repeating the same pattern as the opening of the film when she tries to go out and ends up puking her guts out, in those early scenes heavy emphasis is placed visually on her back and it’s top lit with hard light in a way that exposes every imperfection and mark of age. When she then is hooking up with motorcycle douchebag the opposite motif is played with a dynamic camera move up Sues spine as she again overindulges and is faced with even more severe consequences when she wakes up the next morning. And it’s not even for work or any outside pressure or expectation it’s for sensory pleasure (Sue) or overindulgence (Elizabeth) and that cycle of the two desires feeding into one another as self hatred that the film is really interested in.
She is offered the opportunity to end it repeatedly but is unable to summon the will to let go of her last vestige of beauty even when it costs her everything she once valued about herself.
@@TaylorJWilliamsi think it’s more an aging movie
@@TaylorJWilliams you are so annoying
How would you feel if you didn't eat breakfast today?
I love this movie because of the profound significance for Demi Moore in the role. The actress herself has spent her entire career being both praised for her beauty and maligned for 'doing too much' to hold on to it. You can tell how cathartic some of the scenes were for her to act.
I saw this movie as being about the experience of aging as a woman, not so much aging "as a celebrity". Obviously the Hollywood element is there, but it's so absurd and farcical that it really just feels like a playground for the bigger message. None of the indoor spaces in the film feel "real". They're just a stage to watch the human body. More important is the fact that Demi Moore is a bombshell at the start of the film, but she's stopped seeing herself as a person worthy of existing, fame or not (since she's barely acknowledged for her fame in public anyway).
The movie is very much shot for the female gaze, which I know is an insane thing to say about a movie with so much female nudity. But (and I say this as a queer woman) the endless shots of butts and boobs and genitals are so egregious that they lose their sexuality. You can feel the self-consciousness in the nudity. It's so relatable it's painful, and while it's not subtle, it really worked for me.
I don't think it's a perfect movie. The flashbacks (especially the auditory ones) are too heavy-handed for my taste and I wish more time was spent developing the story through individual scenes as opposed to montages. But it's camp and immersive and really spoke to me and my friends through a lens of womanhood. The other themes are there and they're important, but it's hard to see this movie through another lens (especially when weighed next to Fargeat's other film, Revenge).
I think it works better for Hollywood specifically.
If you’re an older woman banker or nurse you’re not going to be ousted from your job because what you’re selling is a skill set. Hollywood is different because a big part of what’s being sold is one’s looks for that context.
The movie also goes out of its way to show that some people still care for her even when she’s past her prime - eg the run in she has with the fellow she knew in school who was still enamored with her. But she rejected him because he was beneath her.
@@BlindBisonHow do you interpret her changing her attire, her makeup, and then staying home and eating her feelings away as her thinking he is “beneath her”, really? You gotta work on your media literacy buddy.
Also, using “past her prime” to refer to a person is really stupid. Women aren’t cars.
It’s shocking how many people didn’t get “this”.
@@confusedpozole406 I was referring to the early scene in the film where they initially met and her response towards him is cold/dismissive. Later her psyche has fallen to pieces and whatever confidence she had has been shot
> media literacy
Hello fellow redditor lol
Fargeat has said herself that the movie is very much shot for the male gaze.
the second half of the film functions better as a comedy
The last third of the movie is laugh out loud hilarious. The theater I was in was rolling with laughter still audible despite how loud the blood-spewing scene was.
I thought that was rolling into a hello fresh ad😭
i feel as though we are missing the obvious connection to motherhood
I mean if you see motherhood as a purely negative thing- yeah sure!
Motherhood? What are you talking about. You don’t interact with your other self. You are essentially getting a week of your life stolen from this person. How is that motherhood??? You idiots will make any excuse for this trash film
I don't think her flashbacking to prior dialogue is her spoon-feeding the audience, and more just a replication of how these ideas rattle in a woman's head, constantly, whether they like it or not. if it pisses you off that that the dialogue was repeated, I think that's the point she's trying to make. it pisses these women off that this dialogue is constantly repeated in their heads and the spaces they occupy. this is the catalyst of the self hatred
Trust the white boys to come and scream on all platforms how they did not care for a film directed and written by a woman with two female main characters and have the themes of female rage, mother-daughter relationships and nuances of the female experience completely fly over their heads ✨
Always so quick with calling things that women face every single day "simple points" that don't deserve screen time and endless comparisons to male directors! Well, if the men say it's simple, then sure...
I agree. I thought the repetition was purposeful to drive home how the characters feel within themselves
Yeah I think it's reasonable to conclude the repeated dialogue is a reflection of the film's subjectivity. The majority of the film is filmed with Elisabeth's perspective in mind and thus those edits are part of her subjective experience, not necessarily to spoonfeed the audience.
it felt so lazy and ugly seeing old clips just pasted into the movie overtop of everything else
Yes and especially during the Elisasue scene where she quite literally can't express herself or those emotions the same way. The film is putting us literally inside her head(s).
does it insist upon itself?
Very much - I laughed until tears at the ending
It had fine fine actors , just did not care for the movie
@@bunnyrabb1t it was funny brah, I was laughing too :D
The whole logic of the plot broke down completely when the story "switched" from Sue=Elizabeth to justify the Elizabeth starting the experiment to Sue =/=Elizabeth to justify them physically fighting and killing one another. Elizabeth would never accept this Faustian deal, never, even if she had no brains whatsoever lol...she would immediately end it the moment she realized her person did not cross over.
It DOES insist upon itself and I did not care for it.
@@takuid agreed
So, you're aware that the director is aware of what the movie is. If the movie isn't trying to insist that it's smarter than it is then why are you spending more time dissecting something and insisting on attempting to outsmart and outmaneuver this film? This video is about as self congratulatory as you claim the film is. You can argue that this video is just part of the discourse, but you beat us over the head for 27 minutes about points that don't exist in the plot. You missed the point of the movie. I saw this movie twice already and none of the points you project upon the film exist. The video feels more like you were trying to hit a word limit (watch time as well). This comment isn't toxic. It's just part of the discourse.
This movie does good subtext driven drama in the first half and fun horror in the end, but that inconsistency kills the vibe and leaves the film feeling unresolved and empty. It doesn't really drive anything home in the end, and I dont think Im missing anything. Production and technicals are top shelf, but it goes from feeling like high art to hollywood slop.
@@LaVerdad65I agree that the tonal inconsistencies ultimately detracted from the film but I think that audience disappointment is arising from latching onto the drama and not the campy 80s vibe the film was actually going for (imo). I think that comes from misguided marketing - trying to capitalise on the ‘elevated horror’ trend when it’s actually much more akin to something like The Fly or Re-Animator (and much more enjoyable when you take it in that vein!)
@@nerdatheart It is not good enough to be a horror film, because there are no stakes. You don't fear for anyone. Not the protagonist, or her alter ego, or any secondary characters that are only accidental. We didn't linger enough with the protagonist to feel empathy, and she's driven by Vanity, so its literally just the morbid experience of watching a train wreck.
No, it's toxic. You just wrote a thesis on a shit movie.
@@badideabearcub2747 there certainly was a horror element in the film that worked for me. It's the fact that the main character found herself in a situation that had high social stakes. If people see her in her Elizabeth form, with all her new deformities, or if people see Sue when she starts to fall apart. That is what made the movie scary for me. The fact that the main character had to hide herself away from the world as she became more and more deformed, and the fear of how the world would react to her. Of course in the final act, her final form was so outlandish, there isn't really a realistic way for people to react to her, since they don't even know what they're looking at. Are the audience members aware that they're looking at Elizabeth? (Or what is supposed to be Sue- Elizabeth, or whatever)? The final act is the films greatest weakness, since it just resorts to full body horror, but it's just beyond absurdity.
13:40 but it is her.. It's literally the conciousness being transferred and her not wanting to accept her own actions - which is literally the biggest plot hole. No one gets angry at themselves after drinking too much the day before. Made zero sense. Could have been a metaphor for binging, purging and reckless behaviour but wasn't.
It's about deeply seated self-loathing: binging/purging and reckless behavior included as symptoms of this hatred for one's self. Why would you want to specify it down to a metaphor for specific behaviors when its purpose was so much more than that?
if it is the same consciousness, how are they alive and fighting each other at the end. makes zero sense. yes, the film plays both sides, both that it is the same consciousness (to justify the Faustian deal) and then the other side that they can be alive at the same time...which is why it is a comedy film, it was so stupid it was funny
You've never got angry at yourself for drinking too much the day before?
@@SamDavies94 you are tripping, they are alive/awake at the same time and fighting each other in the last act of the movie.
@@takuidnah dude you’re the one tripping. You must have fallen asleep during the last act where she basically does the transferring/fusion process backwards and mixed it all up. It’s not a plot hole whatsoever. It’s clear and obvious that deviating the instructions would create a disastrous result. It’s not hard to use your brain sometimes.
I loved the body horror as i enjoy practical effects but it ironically lacked any substance. It felt like a very flashy music video, good performances and amazing visuals and montages and thats it. Incredibly shallow and very surface level commentary. I was pretty disappointed.
This sums it up pretty well. I also had the exact thought that, in the end, The Substance lacks substance.
I disagree. Just because the film lacks subtlety and just because it is quite clear in the commentary it's making, by no means makes it "shallow". It's not like we're watching your average slasher with kills and gore thrown in just for the fun of it. "The Substance" is actually quite substantial in what it's saying through visual/auditory story telling. And that's the point: it's body horror, not a splatter film made for the sake of gore itself or a dialogue driven film that asks the viewer to come out of it picking apart what was said. I'm confused as to how anyone could walk out of the theater and come to the conclusion that this film that has so much to say that it's practically screaming at you is "shallow" in any way, shape or form.
My thoughts exactly, demi moore character had the same depth on the first scene as on the very last, when it was a cutout pasted to a monster.
As mentioned in the video, the core theme of the film can be summarised from the decaying star in the first 5 mins of screen time. After that it does nothing with the theme, and is incredibly surface level.
If the film's purpose was for me to dislike every character for their lack of depth and introspection, then it succeeded. There's much more than the powerful white male gaze behind the hate of the self that manifests through symptoms like fear of aging, or the pursuit of beauty and perfection in women. The Substance portrait of the human experience lacks substance and force feeds an opinion about issues that are far more universal and complex than what its man-hating feminism wants it to be. Every character in this movie is a villain lacking any plausible emotional state that I could empathize with. When the storyteller thinks that they're far more intelligent than their audience, this is the kind of movie they make.
6:05 i don't think you applied this well, i used it in a thesis and i don't at least see how the belly of the whale fits. she hardly has to do ANY work to get the job. belly of the whale is a frightening test - that is not a frightening test.
About 3 minutes before the very end I thought about leaving, but it kinda won me over in the end by how much it committed to whatever it was going for.
I was about to leave as I was bored senseless. The very end delivered on the body horror but it too lingered for too long. Just meh, wouldnt watch again
The fact none of us understand what it was "going for" by the ending, means you and I should have walked out at any stage, and it wouldn't have been too late to do so
it was gory, it was funny, it was stressful. it had the seven deadly sins woven into it, without making it the main point.
there are so many themes beyond wanting to be young and beautiful again. as she was in her final monster form, how much would she had given to be back in her OG form?? we can never accept ourselves as we are, and when we were that hot young thing, we could never relax, we could never allow ourselves to eat, to consume. only to be consumed. be enough. be pretty. when she starts to get rally old and ugly, she finally allows herself to eat and not give af.
when she's young and pretty it's like her life depends on it this moment of being praised, and how devastating when her teeths starts falling out, she lost the whole point so dragged herself through hell for.
idk man... sometimes i feel like the point of this movie gets lost on men. not saying "only women can watch this movie" not at all everyone can have an opinion on art. but in this specific case, the FEELING of all it all, is only known to women. so i think you're not going to relate much.
imagine the “repetitive bludgeoning” of the theme being your LIFE. that’s womanhood in capitalism. this is a MALE a55 take if I’ve ever seen one.
This isn't just a "male" take on the movie tbh. This guy's a very bitter critic. I used to like his channel a lot until I realised he doesn't sympathise with characters or try to understand the bigger narrative. He just cares about how stories made him feel. He's smart at times, but his analysis of movies is often immature and driven by bias.
The guys in the comment section have me absolutely rolling with laughter at how confident they are that the movie has no merits when they clearly just don't get it
What does "a MALE a55 take" mean??
@@MENACE-km6bd I honestly lost respect for him during an A24 tier list video when he dismissed the Room's merits for being poorly structured, the climax occurs too early and then it drags on, instead of engaging with the fact that the film is about both the kidnapping AND the emotionally taxing aftermath. If he didn't like the film, that's fine, but the way he dismissed it made it clear to me that he was acting in bad faith.
@@MENACE-km6bdomg me too! i thought i was just not as smart/enjoying the wrong films but it’s so true he’s become a bit more bitter since i first started watching :/
Lovely analysis. My out of theater thoughts, Fun overt ride. Powerful enough. I'll probably check out Revenge now
The bar is so low for quality movies people actually think this is a good. Wild! I hated it.
Trust the men to come and scream on all platforms how they did not care for a film directed and written by a woman with two female main characters and also have the themes of female rage, mother-daughter relationships and nuances of the female experience completely fly over their heads ✨
Always so quick with calling things that women face every single day "simple points" that don't deserve screen time and endless comparisons to male directors! Well, if the men say it's simple, then sure...
The last scene was actually heartbreaking to watch, I cried in the theatre while the men sitting beside me giggled at the blood splattering and the boob falling out of her. You focus too much on the "ASMR" and visual aspect of the body horror scenes and completely miss the allegedly simplistic point behind it - you are SUPPOSED TO feel it, the weight of it, the sensory overload, the expectations, the voices in your head, the derealization from your perfected image. It was a devastatingly sad scene. The director did everything for the audience (including men) to FEEL it, yet we are out here analyzing the references and saying it was too much
I loved this film. It didn't tread new territory but it was an exciting visual, cerebral experience, the audio and sparse dialogue were so smart, excellent casting and performances as well. The commodification and discarding of the female body is something men don't experience so i fear what this film conveys won't really resonate with most male viewers.
@@SUD8800 I'm a man and I thought this movie was absolutely brilliant. I'm considering seeing it a 3rd time at this point. I don't think a man could've told this story as well or pushed the envelope. The finale is very powerful. The final cry for help was hard to see. The very last moment of returning to the star where it all began was great. I just thought it was funny that the script for this video was probably 5x longer than the one from the movie and I didn't learn anything new. Just a bunch of talk. I used to really like this channel and now I don't know why I'm still subscribed.
My male boss at work loved it, he's seen it twice and plans to see it again soon. I thought Moore was worthy of an Oscar nomination and the young actress was impressive but I didn't care for it. I do respect that it's something new and not another sequel or Marvel film but I had many problems with the film. With all due respect, I'm getting tired of this "of course MEN don't like it" narrative, it's getting old and offensive.
You could also choose to interpret it as Elisabeth's moment of self-actualization. She and her other self are together, not trying to kill each other, and when they're rejected by the crowd, their hate for themself is now directed externally. Coralie Fargeat is taking her satirical target and having Elisabeth spray blood over it. The fantasy of being applauded are the thoughts of pride and self love that she wants to have. Despite the intrusive thoughts she has, I think it's very significant that Elisabeth is still spinning at the end and nobody was able to stop her. There's absolutely tragedy to the scene too (especially as it moves on to the final scene), but based on Fargeat's interviews where she talks about the film and her influences, I really think she wants us to laugh at the absurdity of it and give us a sense of catharsis, as if a revolution has begin, while also effectively communicating the tragedy of it all.
I wanted to have your experience, where weight is given to the subtext. But the film just gets too absurdist and too comedy horror. Comedic in the same way many horror movies are. I think you're the one who's not picking up on that. This movie really does not have the "substance" that youre pretending it has. But I did pick up on the messages that you refer too, the movie just doesnt do a good job of driving it home. By the end it just feels like a fun horror movie
This movie is a gem. I hope Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Coralie Fargeat, the makeup and special effects teams get a lot of nominations and recognition.
Horror films seldom get recognition for their performances despite many amazing examples of them. If the makeup fx and editing is overlooked, I will protest the awards.
It was a decent black mirror episode that was stretched out to 2hrs20mins
@@F5BOTDOn point 100%
@@F5BOTD Exactly, or one from the Twilight Zone. Not enough substance, no pun intended, for a standalone movie. For me it fell like a stripped down version of the Portrait of Dorian Gray.
The special effect final creature looked awful though...
I gotta agree, watched it with my gf. Horrible piece of shit movie
I was so disappointed by The Substance. It had me for a while but it just KEPT GOING. For me, if it had wrapped itself up around the point where Elizabeth morphed into the old hag, I would've been much happier. It just kept going and going after that. I was bored! I felt that after that point, I was just disrespected as an audience member. You wouldn't think you could get bored at such a grotesque movie.
Same here!
Indeed, The third act was unnecessary. It felt like the director threw every horror movie from the 1980´s into the Mix: The elephant man, Carrie, The puke scene from Stand By Me, The Evil Dead, The Thing, The Blob, The Fly, etc...
I'd say 2,5-3 acts were morbidly comedic. Def entertaining, even if there was no SUBSTANSE in any of it
Same mate
Disrespected as an audience member? You sound so pretentious it’s actually sad. Your comment reads more to the fact you just didn’t understand the movie whatsoever. I know it’s hard for stupid people to put themselves in other people’s shoes, especially in movies, but damn. I feel sorry for your lack of understanding.
To me, so far, this is the best movie of the year. It felt like I imagine people felt when Peter Jackson's Braindead first came out. It manages to be funny, clever, and absolutely disgusting, and I'm here for it. In Braindead, two zombies have intercourse which results in a baby zombie; I never stopped to ask "wait a minute, how is that possible?" because the tone of the film is so clearly cartoony and satirical. Same here; The Substance is leaning into horror comedy's generic conventions, fully embracing them. In these days, where cinematic "elevation" supposedly consists in creating distance from the horror genre, I found The Substance quite refreshing.
I thought this was super fun and there are some subtle messages as well.
*Spoilers* When the doctor gives Liz the note that says his life changed, he never said for the better, but it shows how her desperation for change in her life led her to indeed change it but for the worst.
I also think there is a message that you cannot have both accolades and success/ merit behind you AND youth at the same time. Her roses she originally gets say we loved you, and thank her for all the good years which highlights her age but also shows she has proved herself and cemented success while her younger self gets roses with a note that says everyone WILL love you. She is good looking but has done nothing so nobody really loves her yet and she can’t have both.
This movie tried
I can also appreciate a horror-style fable, as opposed to more grounded sci-fi body horror like The Fly, or The Thing -
I like Demi Moore appearing, in horror as well
This just wasn't a compelling horror, despite unique presentation
I appreciate the themes, they just weren't realised well in this movie through the disfigurement stages, or story imo
The ending was almost comedy (aside from the face at the end, that was kinda cool)
Yeah... I kinda came away from this feeling nothing, I was annoying at the constant replication of other films. It's so unsubtle in it's messaging it becomes boring. The amount of people online praising this is unbelievable - for a film called The Substance, the film certainly has none... its all style. Very, very disappointing.
You mention within the video a few of the filmography she rips off, what I saw:
Videodrome
The Fly
Persona
The Elephant Man
Society
The Thing
Requiem for a Dream
Black Swan
Sunset Boulevard
Dead Ringers
Hot Fuzz
AntiViral
The Portrait of Dorian Gray
Jekyll and Hyde
The Shining
2001
Vertigo
Titane
Beau Is Afraid
It seems this movie doesn’t resonate with men at all, this is an overall shitty take with good points. I respect your opinion but I can’t help but find you patronising, you don’t seem to have respect for any of this movie, all you do is reference other films for the majority of this video, if the references are meant to be so “obvious” and heavy handed on purpose, then why beat the point to death.
yeah lol such a preachy video but hey he had some good points I agree with you
My boss at work is a guy and he loved it, his male friends loved it, he's seen it twice and can't wait to see it again. It has a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, Weniei Ma (a woman) gave it a "rotten" review, Eileen Jones (a woman) gave it a "rotten" review, Susan Granger (a woman) gave it a "rotten" review, several, several male critics gave it glowing reviews. It has a 70% fresh and many positive reviews are given by men.
If you dislike the movie, as I do as well, why would you have respect for it? Making such a long video with a lot of explanation about why he doesn’t like it is respect enough. Disreprectful to me is calling a long video a „shitty take“. Which take exactly?
@@ChromeKong the movie was a bold swing for a second feature, casting Demi Moore to portray the role even more so, he didn’t really acknowledge any of that. I don’t remember what’s in the video at this point but once again I respect his opinion and yours! But to pick apart a movie because it references other films so obviously is a shitty take to me. If you enjoy this guys opinions more power to you 🔥
I'm a man and I thought this movie was a masterpiece. Hilarious, tragic, surprisingly emotional, and viciously smart about its satirical targets. I related so much to Demi Moore's character. You don't need to wear makeup to know what it's like to feel unattractive and impossible to "fix". When the camera eyes her body up and down, I immediately recognize the gaze that I have when I look at my imperfections. And yeah Taylor used to have some interesting, insightful takes (still has snippets of them here and there), but to me he's come to represent the cynical "film bro" who wants desperately to have a unique, controversial voice and opinion, at the expense of anything, pun intended, "substantive".
I never checked out while watching this film and I don't think The Substance is trying to make any sort of point about trying to "find the value in older things". This is a movie about internalized self-hatred and the consequences of that along with the perils of addiction. Although the stage is Hollywood, there's something relatable here for everyone that is not class related. It's big and boisterous and in your face and I think it's designed to bring out a strange sort of empathy in ALL of its viewers. This includes men, most of whom who review the film can viscerally feel what Elisabeth is experiencing as she's tearing her face off when she is preparing for her date. One of the things I loved about the film is that its messages are obvious. In a climate that seems to value films more for their complexity and the viewers ability to tease out the meaning, "The Substance" is right there blasting what it's trying to say straight to your face: just like how society and the media are constantly bombarding us with messages about how we (as women) are never good enough, pretty enough, young enough, etc. under the guise of "self improvement" and the barrage of products designed to somehow "make us better". I think the movie is timeless in that it speaks to every generation: past, present and future. From women breaking their ribs and mutilating their internal organs by forcing themselves into corsets to pumping themselves up with Ozempic to lose weight and beyond. Furthermore, I think the film pays great respect to Cronenberg (as well as several other directors) without trying to actually become them. There's just too much to say here and an opinion is an opinion but I really disliked your commentary here. As for Harmony Korine, I'd say "Spring Breakers" is a lot like "The Substance" in style and visual storytelling: just not nearly as good.
You are reaching. The movie is not that deep. I got second hand embarrassment reading your comment trying to defend a movie that doesn’t deserve it
@@Duuuuuuuuuuuude Disagree
Love the horror genre but this movie wasn’t for me. I was interested at first and enjoyed the opener then they lost me as it went on. Some of the shots/framing/effects were pretty good, but I got bored after Sue’s introduction scenes. I guessed pretty much everything that was going to happen.
THANK YOU! I felt like I was watching a mash up of Brandon Cronenberg films!
Brandon cronenberg wouldve made a far superior movie had he directed this. His movies, although over the top and perhaps punishing, take the world they live in seriously. Something I wish this story would’ve done.
@ oh I agree with you. I guess I should have said a Brandon Cronenberg dupe.
Dorian grey or perfect blue and helter skelter have already done this way better. Why are so many movies so uninspired
substance is a solid 2/5
Hahahhaa ok i think showing someone eat shrimp like that IS body horror. It is just....ugh. shivers.
Agreed. I think that that scene was one of the most disturbing bits of "body horror" in the film.
i don't understand what all of you had with the shrimps. i was watching the waitress butt and him eating the shrimps was low class, but that was it. there is lots of other stuff thats gross. this didn't register with me.
@@oooodaxteroooo Your comment is gross.
@@pegacorn13 im just saying, the shrimps weren't really noteworthy.
Try eating shrimp and youll know its not easy. 👍
@@oooodaxteroooo th-cam.com/video/RSTN0m2n6AM/w-d-xo.htmlsi=_oO1IEoK_gRTiHIN : if you don't find this "noteworthy" or disgusting (especially within the context of the conversation, I have no idea what to say to you.
This is very well argued but unfortunately you said 'Joseph Conrad' instead of Jospeh Campbell at 6:17 so
Lmao touché
I clicked into the video and I saw a man. I understand the title
Basically... It insists upon itself
did not care for it
It insists upon itself
From my understanding, it’s a film that argues for the maintenance of borders, stating that these things have an essential nature to them and shouldn’t deviate from the path laid out for them. Body horror, like a lot of horror genre, argues for the maintenance of the status quo, the deformed body representing an unwelcome change that should be avoided at all costs and serves as a warning.
Horror monsters reflect the cultural anxieties of their time, not reinforce them. They’re a depiction of the way the status quo others those who do not fit within it - to the point of literally dehumanising them.
The only horror genre that could be said to be genuinely normative is the Slasher with its virginal Final Girl trope
this is absolutely not true of nearly all body horror; the so-called master himself cronenberg has said that he despises the term and is often aiming for something much more emotionally complicated than simple shock and horror. it's pretty evident in a bunch of his movies, but ESPECIALLY in crimes of the future. the quote that's perhaps more appropriate for contextualising cronenberg and those who took the right lessons from him is actually his open support of trans people, where he says that the way we choose to change our bodies is a form of ecstatic art, and he's god damn right
I gave up the minute he showed the graph of the monomyth. that was an unbelievable stretch and literally rearranges and ignores multiple significant plot points just to try to make the point that still makes absolutely no sense. This film very much does not fit into the structure of the monomyth and he gives away his own personal biases about story structure by saying that the monomyth is "basically universal and should apply to any story". The monomyth is a bullshit concept based on western male ideas of story structure, Fargeat pushes against this story structure with the monstro elisasue and killing elisabteh beats, she doesn't ever return, she falls deeper and deeper into her addiction to youth and being perfect until it destroys her. Killing Elisabeth isn't just the refusal of return that will ultimately be wrapped up neatly and taking the substance a second time is absofuckinglutely not any kind of rescue. To try to wrap that kind of tragedy into a neat Joseph Campbell ass story structure is to completely ignore what it's actually trying to say.
your video just made me like this movie even more. I think this might be one of my three 5 star films of the year. great video
Oh I aspire to be as dumb as you someday
The extermination note said "we are sorry you didn't appreciate your experience with substance." Not disappointment. The failure of the user to respect the balance.
All that to say that I didn't get that read at all. I don't think she was say "lol u mad" to the audience, I think youre reaching for shit that's there man. It's pretty basic, it's just the part of the film where the narrator rubs in the lesson that she fucked up, but in the same false senserity that they've been subjected to the ebtire film by all of the men. You fucked it up, Demi Moore and other girl. That's it.
'The Substance' impressed me as a convoluted 'male sex fantasy', albeit a perverse one, disguised as an 'intellectual' film, which it certainly wasn't. It says nothing about the ideal woman…in fact it says nothing about women at all, other than equating copulation with the essence of womanhood. The film never rose above a comic book level of culture. I feel the same way about 'Dogtooth', and in fact, most modern pseudo-intellectual films. The Pre-Code film-makers were honest about their motive: to cram as much titillation into a film as possible - to ensure back-sides on seats.
Today's Pharisaical film-makers, have devised countless pretexts and mental contortions, to justify the same dubious practices as the Pre-Code filmmakers. Furthermore, if it is now an imperative that 'sex' has to be at the fulcrum of all their artistic endeavors, it still hasn't occurred to them, that you can produce an arty piece of cinema about sex, without resorting to the exploitation of the feminine form. Mick La Salle's piece on 'Poor Things' is worth reading, as he presents a watertight case against the film's preposterous smugness.
How can a sex-ploitaion film effectively do battle with…sex-ploitation? How can actresses who radically conform to beauty standards (via plastic surgery) be integral exemplars for young women? Why would any integral actress participate in, and promote, a sex-ploitation/Roman Colloseum flick? Will this movie stop women of all ages, from the natural desire, of wanting to appear beautiful in public? Will a sexy girl running around in her underwear make viewers think differently about sexual assault?
The trailer for ‘The Substance’ promises titillation galore for teenage boys and dirty old men, under the guise of ‘social critique’. How far is this tactic from the films produced by the American Social Hygiene Association, at the beginning of the 20th century? The males will leave this film with ‘flesh on the mind’ and the females with ‘cosmetics on the mind’. Which ideology or cause, could justify prostituting images of a woman’s nubile contours, to over a billion viewers? Successful actresses build their career on character, rather than contours (i.e. Angela Lansbury). Filmmakers who genuinely love women, provide opportunities for their feminine strength of character to shine. Misogynistic filmmakers expose bodily contours and then proceed to tear them apart for the viewer’s perverse delight. My favourite Demi Moore film is ‘One Crazy Summer’. I would like to see more films like ‘Howard’s End’ or ‘Trust’ where the women are given something edifying to do…
While the filmmakers are patting themselves on the back, for simply reinforcing ‘the male gaze’, here are some valid criticisms: “But for all its feminist diatribes, The Substance is still a movie that is 80 percent extreme close-ups of Margaret Qualley’s arse. In nearly every other scene, the camera lovingly pans over her spandex-clad exterior, in sequences that are shot like ‘90s Viagra commercials” (Inverse.com). "The Substance’s presentation is as shallow as the very thing it’s critiquing. There’s no compassion, and certainly no catharsis - just more hagsploitation and a sense of déjà vu." (Hannah Strong) "An overuse of stale horror conventions in an already predictable plot-combined with decades-old, thoroughly unchallenging ideas about women’s relationships to their bodies-leads to a film that claims to support its protagonist, while treating her like the butt of the joke at every turn...I will not deny that Margaret Qualley is great to look at, but Fargeat undermines her film’s satirical point by catering to the same male gaze that the script claims to despise so deeply. Fargeat isn’t quite sure what she wants to say about women’s relationships to their body and images of their body, so she falls back on simply showing us that Margaret Qualley is hot.” (Paste Magazine) 'After two hours and 20 minutes of flamboyantly repulsive variations on this well-worn theme, even the strongest-stomached and most feminist of viewers could be excused for muttering, We get it already." (Slate Magazine)
love when people use “difficult” words to sound intelligent lol you can do your review without being pretentious my dude
I agree with some points you made tho
This dude is incapable of not being pretentious, he will probably drop it when he gets older tho.
chat gpt rewrite requiem for a dream with eye candies, make it appealing for gen z
lmao this 👆🏻😂
Joseph Conrad?
The movie was dumb. Especially the ending. 4/10 movie!
You sound just as dumb and bitter as this random TH-cam reviewer.
I feel i can articulate my disdane towards this film more simply.
This movie is ass
Both metaphorically and literally
this was the most predictable movie i've ever seen where I wasn't bored or insulted by it. i was constantly on the edge of my seat waiting for the eventual pay off. i appreciated your marxist critique but this was still my 2nd favorite movie of the year.
You could've just said "I didn't like the movie" and would've sounded infinitely more intelligent.
Dang
are you hinting at the fact that he likes to hear himself talk and smearing people with bullshit bingo for pleasure? ;) thank god, he didn't make the movie :)
Well unfortunately your film making is some of the most cringe shit I’ve seen, so I don’t want to hear anything about intelligence from you when you really thought those were good enough to upload
6:23 I literally don’t believe you predicted that ending
I did…
dude what?? you did not understand this film at all😭. please take a step back, recognize your positionality and watch an explanation video omfg
You are so dumb hahahaha
6:17 Joseph Campbell, not Conrad
B. Rosenberger Rosenberg.
This is probably the most fulfilling video on this movie that I've watched, despite that I disagree with you. I can understand why you didn't like it because of its directness, but that's exactly what I liked about it. A film doesn't need to be impenetrable for it to have a strong thesis (I thought Titane was a wet fart of a film that had nothing to say) , and while the film lacks complexity in its discussion of the topic, I still found it to be really effective at exploring the antagonistic relationship we take on with our own bodies.
I typically hate movies that hold the audience's hand, but the instances you cited of this felt more like an attempt to reflect Elisabeth's inner world in the exaggerated tone of the movie. I dunno, it just really worked for me for some reason
Oh and I also really thought the presentation was spectacular. Her creativity with the match cuts and the visual symmetry was just so much fun to watch. Not to mention the energy of the editing. Again, direct, but not basic.
I'm kinda struggling to imagine a version of the film that feels "older" as you described
Titane is a million times more nuanced and interesting than The Substance though...
@@SamDavies94 sure! I didn't get much out of it though.
I would argue not everything has to have something to say
You think the amount of times the director has flashbacks to foreshadowing is clever??? Jesus Christ don’t forget how to breathe with that pea brain
this film is about body dysmorphia, beauty standards, and what it’s like to be a woman in a this western capitalist society. it’s over the top to highlight the feelings real women (and others) often have. it was very true to plenty of people’s experiences and you’re actively invalidating that with this pretentious, ill willed video 👎🏽
Shut the fuck up. I have severe body dysmorphia. This film is not above criticism because it is about body dysmorphia. It is a cheap, shallow aggressively tasteless garbage that tries too hard at every turn to be as gross and disgusting as possible
All of that is covered in the first 15 mins of the film, the film then proceeds to do absolutely nothing with it...
@@SamDavies94they did absolutely nothing with it? Bro 😂😂 Did you fall and hit your head, or is your comprehension that bad?
@@olred3870 he is absolutely right. in first 30 minutes we know everything we need to know, the next 2 hours is just repetition of the same message and in case u missed something you will get explanation in the next scene anyway, it is insulting to intelligence and viewer, the movie is for those who consume cheap mainstream crap daily which is already unwatchable satire of itself, but most of mainstream enjoyers need this over the top crap of the same substance to get the message. but the problem is not just that. the dialogues are horrible, the characters are repulsive and have no personality, how do you even care about them? the only horror in the movie is harvey eating the shrimps that's the only scene it made me puke, the rest was borefest, the ending was funny though and it even had some hidden messages, also the director is clearly very talented she built up nice suspense in first 30 minutes, cinematography was great, too bad the over the top cliches were jumping out already in those 30 mins and totally took over the rest of the movie, where there was just nothing memorable anymore. In other words the message itself is not the problem it's how it is delivered and it is just done in the dumbest way possible, you can only like it if you actually like the things it criticizes, well I don't, so too bad, movie sucked.
It insists upon itself.
Not to mention the over advertising. I felt like I was watching an extension of the advertisement
I think the end was totally unnecessary...it ended for me when her teeth fell out in the elevator. Cutting it there and leaving us to imagine what she might do next or if she's going to survive would have been much better imo
BOO THIS MAN!!!!
The Substance will go down as a masterpiece classic. The resentment between the old and the new was powerful even if it was somewhat simplistic.
Yep I have no doubt it will
😂😂😂
You are dumb
Did you watch the same movie???? Absolutely brain dead take for a simple and bad movie
@@Duuuuuuuuuuuude why is it a bad film? What is your argument?
I'm not entirely happy with the current trend of criticism regarding movie messages being 'too on the nose'. Whatever one thought of 'Don't Look Up', and I'm speaking as a fully paid up member of the working class', whilst the metaphor of that film might have seemed clumsy, its 'on the noseness' was precisely the point for me. Because what it was saying, fundamentally obvious messaging or not, is still precisely true; and us humans, considering the current state of things, do need to be reminded what types of folks are running the show methinks.
The same accusation of obviousness was aimed at 'Triangle of Sadness', but again, to me, it felt like a necessary and wildly entertaining reminder of the ruling elites' current predilection for GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). I've recently revisited 'The Menu' too (a film I initially dismissed and didn't much like) in response to the fantastic 'Horror Vanguard' podcast's deeper look at the role of service workers and elite industrial complexes that are not 'Hello Fresh' or 'Better Help' or 'Aura' (and how absurdist and ironic and sad is it that you have too to repeat the message in this very video you're making, but which you shouldn't be judged badly for, but is also sad for its conventionality - ?). I suspect that 'The Menu's' perspective might suggest how illogical a class analysis might be in regard to 'The Substance.'
'The Substance', for all its humour (and it is funny) was an explicitly sad film to me; in that it made me sad to see what my daughter calls 'the extent to which women can hate themselves in the pursuit of beauty.' When you, like me, as a man, pontificate on the excesses and repetition of the point in 'The Substance', and its formal absurdist qualities for the sake of its point, I'm reminded of when Anna Biller's 'The Love Witch' was compared by many critics to the work of Russ Meyer, and Biller asked the question, 'Is this me, my camera, and my attitude towards my actresses? Really?' (See Kyle Kalgren's 'Brows Held High' video essay on this for reference). Of course, I don't know your take on Tarantino's work re when a director explicitly references other film-makers, but I don't see him j'accused of this much, but instead rather celebrated when, in my view, he really should be criticised for his lack of imagination in that regard.. Anna Biller rightly spoke of 'The Love Witch' being a sad film - that its protaogonist's journey culminates in utter sadness. I felt much the same for the 'Sparkles', despite the shits and giggles of the maximalism in 'The Substance'. The final plea of 'Monstro Elisasue' called to mind 'Carrie's' horror at the peak of prom as the bucket of blood is poured over her. After all, this combined 'Sue' is attending the highlight of her career, the New Year's Eve special - so why wouldn't the bad blood visited upon women be returned in spades. Like a once wonderful, also rabid misogynist musician once said, 'There's joy in repetition.'
Anyway, these are some of my feelings after having seen 'The Substance' earlier today. Still, I have more to say this:
I enjoyed Julia Ducournau's 'Raw', but it did have a nasty 'Kill your gays' denouement. And while it's probably true that the same question wouldn't necessarily be asked of a male character, I do wonder at the mass killing Alexia commits in 'Titane'. It's rageful in response to societal ills I guess, but it's never really addressed after the fact.
So yeah, I didn't find 'The Substance' thrilling; it made me laugh quite a bit, provoked a lot of thoughts (I've not even fully comprehended the role that food plays in the film, but I know its function is vital in respect of women's self-image), and it made me very very sad, much in the way I felt sad at the scene in 'Challengers' when Tashi, fully understanding the consequences of her injury, cried under the tree. Sadness is universal. And scary, And sometimes boring. And hopelessly conventional. It's like 'Moonlight' and like moonlight. And beautiful, like 'Monstro Elisasue' calling to the coventional with her conventional plea - 'It's still me.'
Anyways, mostly love your work, although, and I think you've hinted at this before, you do come across sometimes as resenting what you do. I'm in the UK so I never had to worry about college fees, and health care bills, so it must be hard sometimes I guess to put all your brilliance to something as unpredictable and variable as the old algorithm. So love and kind regards to you, and I sincerely hope you get to where you need.
ps - I've not seen anyone refer to Brian Yuzna's 'Society' in respect of 'The Substance', which it did put me in mind of, but I've not seen in years. That might be a frame worth examining. x
Boooooooo! *throws vegetables*
My issue is the reviews that call this film feminist. Feminism is about improving life for women in general and challenging conventional thinking. Elizabeth totally believes and buys into conventional beauty standards. She only is angry that she no longer benefits. She also only wants to improve her on life. She has no community and no politics or philosophy.
It’s feminist in that it’s a warning to NOT do what Elizabeth did.
a depiction of a character that holds certain beliefs does not mean those beliefs are what the film is imparting thematically. when people call the film "feminist" they aren't saying elizabeth herself is a feminist.
Portrayal is not the same thing as endorsement. The film punishes her in the most brutal way possible for this mentality.
Also portraying patriarchy as a bunch of disgusting villains with disney levels of flatness is not doing the complex issues any favors. And yeah, it’s fine that it doesn’t, but then please stop calling this a feminist movie or some kind of art movie. There is nothing in it than the most superficial critique of the most obvious cases of patriarchal abuse like Epstein/Weinstein but as a viewer I’m not invited to think and understand anything for myself. Therefore I can easily disconnect without gaining any deeper understanding or a feeling of urgency.
@@ChromeKong It's still feminist thought because it's literally making fun of the patriarchy and those who uphold the system. Satire doesn't need to be deep and nuanced and complex. Coralie Fargeat is making an over the top horror movie, so of course the system is going to be portrayed in an over the top way. It's Body Horror Barbie (and Greta Gerwig would agree since she adjudicated Fargeat the winner of Best Screenplay).
Like, nobody wants to sit and hear a more measured Dennis Quaid describe his relationship with his mother and how that impacted his treatment of women. It's a silly, angry, body horror movie with a heightened sense of style. And yeah, it's feminist too.
Thank god I finally found someone who didn’t care for the film- I haven’t even watched the video yet, I was just surprised to see someone not giving this film a blowjob like everyone else
So the film is basically pro-essentialism?
This movie is one of the bumbest shit I have ever seen in my life. All the good that this movie had going was for nothing as the last 30 or so minutes at the end was incredible stupid. The good: cinematography, acting, idea, top notch body horror. The bad: oh my! The bad! That stupid stupid ending! We are supposed to believe that a Cronenberg creation could reach the podium without security noticing?!?! Beyond stupid. But it goes even more doen the drain, the reaction from the audience: first, they don't notice the alien im front of them....then when she reveals herself THEY START TO ATTACK HER!!!!!.....we reach a new low if this is considered a masterpiece.
Not everything we see in the final act is real
Yk surrealism is a thing right
bumbest
@@TheGlowingManYT hello! Can you pinpoint me where it was implied it's not real? I may have missed this
The movie was so camp, I loved it!
yh i didn't really like this film, granted I'm not a big fan of body horror anyways. But I didn't know anything about this film going in initially. I think everything was just a lot for me to process, I had a bit of a censory overload. I know people will either love or hate this film for its subtext, I'm aligning mre with Taylors views. But I'm just not a big fan of that kind of thing. It was mean-spirited and honestly just fucking disgusting to look at. Which is something I'm not actively seeking in film, to that extent. but of course those are just just my thoughts :)
This the last time I'm letting twitter choose a movie for me
I agree, the most frustrating part of this film is how it refuses to abide by its own logic. Why does Elisabeth use the substance? If she gets absolutely nothing out of it, and her other self constantly is screwing her over then WHY DOES SHE CONTINUE TO DO IT?
They are ONE. It can be interpreted as extreme body modification.
@@reng935 Here's the thing "They are one" sounds nice and tidy, until you actually watch the movie and see that neither of them recall the other's experiences. Yes, their actions have consequences for the other, but they are very much their own separate entity making their own selfish decisions. They do not have a joint consciousness. Elisabeth does not share Sue's experience. She has no idea what Sue is doing for her week+. She is not getting to indulge in her youth again. So my question persists, what does Elisabeth get out of the substance?
Because she thinks they are? She can see the success reflect throughout the day but it eats away at her?
@@soodhooku what do you mean “she thinks they are?” If you had a mini-me idealized version of yourself out in the world, but you have no idea what it does and it only makes your life worse, what motive is there for you to keep on with this situation?
Dude, they're the same person. She's screwing herself over. That's the point. She keeps doing it because she benefits. That's not the film "not abiding by its own logic", it's a character not being logical. And characters don't act logically because people are not logical. There are countless people every day who spend their savings on plastic surgery that at best don't last and at worst become straight up body horror shit. In real life. That's what is happening here
It’s a 7/10 for me. It was extremely fun to watch as someone who didn’t know anything about it, but I also see lots of plotholes and some obvious continuity errors that stick out to me.
Major plot holes and a lack of attention to detail and you rate it a 7/10???
@ yeah because it’s awesome to watch in a theater full of people. It isn’t perfect but it’s damn good at what it sets out to accomplish.
just got home from seeing the movie and you said my thoughts about it almost exactly! i was initially really on board with its tone and what it was going for in the beginning but as it kept going it really just wore me down with how on the nose everything was. idk i thought the concept was cool and i loved the body horror but the movie as a whole just didn't do it for me
I watched an interview with the writer and all her commentary about the movie was so surface level that i dont believe she was the only writer. Ive watched dozens of reviews and nobody gets the film . I find that odd being how simple the movie is. Time to start a channel
lol okay champ
As surface level as the movie itself. I‘m not surprised to be honest.
I think this film is a fantastic satire of shallow feminist critique of beauty standards - but I don’t know how intentional that was!
Casting Demi Moore as an old hag is brilliant because the woman is stunning. “Let’s make a movie about how beauty standards harm women where everyone is gorgeous and one of the horrors she faces is spending too long putting on makeup and can’t go on a date.” Brilliant. No notes. 10/10.
For me it perfectly captured how ridiculous and outdated a lot of Feminist 101 critique is. Like the fact that Elisabeth/Sue are starting in an AEROBICS TV SHOW?! What is this, the 80s? And Elisabeth’s lowest point being the food binge - like I think it’s supposed to be ridiculous! The plot is what SOCIETY imagines to be the scariest thing that can happen to a woman
I genuinely think it works so well as a satire of the exact people saying “This role was perfect for Demi, she’s so brave for doing it!” without realising they’re literally reinforcing the selfsame standards that are being lampooned
I also love how there are women in the cs are giving you your lashing for this preposterous take no one asked you for. Just a whole bunch of word salads to intellectualize your misogyny.
And no one asked you to comment dummy. He presented his critique in a well formatted way, and the fact you are frothing at the mouth saying he is a misogynist says a lot about your intelligence
You are one of the most pretentious commentators in TH-cam that I love to hate, only a smidge deep enough for shallow audiences like me to share the pretence. I am subscribing.
You held back in your critique of this ripoff to other, superior movies. By the way, there was no visual prowess to this mimesis. The cinematography RIPPED OFF, a countless-endless amount of better films, The Shining, Excorsist, Carrie etc. etc. etc. Ad nauseum. Filmmakers like this can only exist post Siskel and Ebert and in the hey-day of pop-culture at your finger tips - youtube. There is ABSOLUTELY NO originality in this crappy movie.
This film once again showcases the mediocrity of the women directors who've been vetted, usually because of NEPOTISM. Is it a coincidence that The Substance, like Titane (a RIPOFF OF CRASH), Barbie (a goofy, pop-culture, pastiche, color-coordinated rip off of just about everything) or Saltburn (a RIPOFF OF MANY MOVIES, ALL SUPERIOR INCLUDING THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY) is OVERHYPED simply because they're WOMEN? No. There's no coincidence. Besides the ridiculous theme: "men force women into subservient roles, for their youthfulness and beauty standards. (how original)," which is so trite and not defensible, since so many women themselves shallowly worship youth, beauty and celebrities (just look at Instagram - really a phone app designed for women who scroll envying each other). Women deserve better movie than shite like this. Stop pulling punches. If you're going to strike, strike hard, damnit.
This movie was an absolute trainwreck.
Some great tits n' ass and a few laughs, but this might be the worst film I've seen this year 👏🏼
Literally any pile of crap can win a film award these days 😂
If you didn’t get this movie just rewatch it again. Many people are really missing the point smh
Your mustache serves as a disclaimer not to take anything you say in this video too seriously
Remarking on a man's appearance reviewing a movie that says women are mostly valued and judged by their appearance.....
@@joshuah9109 it just demonstrates poor judgement. It’s not like he was born with it. That mustache was a choice.
@@phaedrus7971 taking the substance demonstrates poor judgement, it was a choice.
@@joshuah9109 Yes, so we agree. That mustache is probably as bad a choice as taking the substance, if not worse.
You are either a kid or really dumb.
It’s interesting how different people took this movie so differently. Several of your take aways were not what I got at all.
god just go back to watching 13 reasons why
You should too, maybe take a few notes from the show
@ i’ve seen it all wouldn’t recommend it
Literally shut up
Thank god you added the word literally, I know you are dumb as hell and your opinion doesn’t matter then 🤪
Just another overrated piece of s..., like the 99% of nowdays movies.
This movie starts out with a fly in a glass of wine. The time is now but everything is old Hollywood.
It's an homage to the fly, and a statement about the beauty industry and objectivication of women mixed in with the concept of aging and death.
It's not that complicated
Yeah, and the fact you like it says a lot about your intelligence
Bet you're fun at parties
can we just have fun? must we be so serious? i just think it obviously wasn’t for you, and that’s ok! not everyone likes everything, nothing truly is objectively good to everyone. but that’s not the movies fault. correlating ur own dislike for it as a fault of the movie or the director is stupid. and pretentious. like ur mustache
That’s one of the problems with being a critic. I write a review for every film I watch, but don’t consider myself a critic. Just a movie lover, I try and focus on what I like in what I watch
Every other thing about this movie is praising it, be quiet no one is saying you can’t have fun dummy. You found so much worth in this movie about appearances and critique his mustache, choke on your spit you moron
clickbait contrarian, the channel
even your title is bloated, desperate, and craving for a higher word count
top
what a peabrained review lmao
What a pea brained comment lmao
The Substance is cinema
is just marketing
@@renatonunez-melgarp2066 This video is.
yeah a bad one
I agree with you, very shallow storyline + the most annoying was the young/older versions seemed two different people and didnt remember what the other one was doing.
I think that’s how it works. That’s why the instructions really tried to reinforce that they were the same, because they don’t really share the same mind.
@@ninjaeddy1717 with certain changes it could have been great. As it is now, it was aesthetic and opportunity to admire Demi Moore who was more charismatic than yonung actress.
how do you miss the point of a movie this bad
@@avad3482 so what was it?
@@ninjaeddy1717 If they don't share the same mind how did the older version of the male nurse in the beginning know who Demi was when they both were sitting in the restaurant. Plot hole after plot hole in this dumpster fire trash movie
To say that you didn’t care for it, isn’t to say that it isn’t award worthy.
it insisted upon itself.
It was a great movie
L
This movie looked pretentious just from the trailer lol “they replace the old actresses!!!” We yeah. The only business they keeps those that are to enfeebled to do anything is the government.
I hated the body shots it felt like the Megan fox transformers scene people always talk about
...surely the movie isn't poking fun at that
A body horror focusing on the body????? No way!
It was supposed to be a commentary on the male gaze
bruh what did you expect from a body horror movie about aging and youth?
Me when I lack any kind of media literacy