I watched The Substance with my mother-in-law
Spoilers rarely bother me, as I feel that if a film or show is good and worth watching then it's good and worth watching, even if I know what's going to happen. I mean maybe you try not to spoil a movie like The Sixth Sense. But I'm about to spoil the absolute substance out of The Substance so if that matters to you, don't read until after you watch. Then you can be mad at me if you liked it, cause I sure didn't!
Viewing experiences are unavoidably impacted by who you watch with. In 2005 I was visiting family in NJ, and at my behest we saw the Miranda July film Me and You and Everyone We Know. Sandwiched between my favorite aunt and cousin, we watched a scene where two teenage girls practice giving a blowy to a much older neighbor. I remember nothing else from this film because that scene in the company of my family made me want to blast myself into outer space, and I otherwise don't believe in the pursuit of space travel (I obviously believe in aliens I just figure they're here among us like in the documentary Men In Black, and we'll know when the time is right).
Later I saw the film again with my pal Adam, with whom I saw some of the best of the early aughts (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Lost In Translation, Wet Hot American Summer) and it landed VERY DIFFERENTLY to say the least. Probably wasn't worth it, but I was in a deeply indie phase and knew I was supposed to appreciate patron saint Miranda July.
I don't think I'll revisit The Substance. Though not because of watching it with my mother-in-law! She's actually very chill film-watching company, while my own mom can be spectacularly prudish about pop culture.
When I was around 11 we went on a little vaca in Vermont, staying at a cabin that my dad was very excited had a pool table, but was otherwise rustic and remote, with no tv connection, just a VCR and a hodgpodge of VHS tapes. In other words it was the cabin from The Ring. I remember two things from that trip: 1) I had headlice from summer camp and 2) my mom inexplicably chose Rosemary's Baby from the VHS selection. She must have forgotten about the scene when the devil impregnates Rosemary, because right when it began, she frantically told me to leave the room and then called me back a few minutes later. I was 11, the whole movie made no sense to me, and when I finally watched the film in its entirety as an adult the devil scene was so psychedelic and surreal I definitely wouldn't have registered what was happening as a kid, so the real horror came from learning that it was directed by Roman Polansky.
A few years later Mom, newly a librarian, heard about the movie Party Girl and giddily rented it to watch with me, pitching it as the story of a cool, stylish New York girl who decides she wants to be a librarian. About halfway through, Parker Posey and her clearly gay roommate argue over who more urgently needs the shower, resulting in them both getting in at the same time. The scene couldn't be less sexual, but my mom stopped the movie and, as with Rosemary's Baby, I didn't see the whole thing until many years later when it became an all-time fave.
Now about The Substance. Fine yes the overarching premise about women being devalued and disappeared as they age is valid and evergreen, definitely worth writing about, and Demi Moore obviously couldn't be a more perfect representation of that Hollywood trope. Her performance is stunning. But about halfway through I thought this should have been a short. Partly because the genre of horror is body horror, and body horror is extremely not my bag. I don't find it scary, just disgusting, and I don't enjoy being disgusted except when I open youtube and for some reason without prompting it shows me earwax removal videos. Now THAT'S what I'm talkin about.
So my thing is if you're serving me allegorical horror based on a fictional medical procedure, you gotta sufficiently complete the thought or I'm going to spend the movie asking annoying questions, because I am annoying. Demi Moore's Elisabeth acquires the titular substance (Ecto Cooler) in The Substance, and without detailed instructions she knows how to tie off her arm and shoot it right up. Maybe her character played an IV drug user at some point, so I suspended disbelief for that moment. But the belief suspension demands started coming fast and furious after that, as the younger/firmer/more agreeable version of her, named Sue, burst forth from Elisabeth's back, Greek mythology-style, and this bizarro tether somehow knew how to neatly, albeit disgustingly, suture the two foot-long gaping wound, hook Elisabeth up to IV nutrition pouches, and also use a lumbar puncture to extract spinal fluid from Elisabeth's limp body.
The nature of the tether's consciousness is never defined. Does Sue have the complete 50-year memory of Elisabeth's life? Or is she a kind of vapid half-baked clone, passable in showbiz because that's the Hollywood ideal? The irony of course being that the substance yields a creature devoid of substance. Lack of substance is ultimately my indictment of the film.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, though not horror, is also premised upon a fictional medical procedure with existential ethical implications. In that case you can go to a hastily repurposed dentist's office and have your brain mapped by Mark Ruffalo in order to erase memories of one subject, perhaps a deceased pet, or a bad breakup. There are obviously SO MANY problems with this, from the logistics to the ethics to the science itself, but therein lies the tension and narrative propulsion of the film. This type of duality in art naturally prompts attempts at communication across planes of existence and consciousness. In Eternal Sunshine, Joel's sedated brain understands that memories of his ex, Clementine, are being systematically erased, so he and memory-Clem try to outrun the erasure together, hiding in unrelated memories. In The Substance, when Sue goes rogue and extracts more than the strictly allotted amount of spinal fluid to extend her time awake and ambulatory, resulting in Elisabeth's body parts dramatically aging to a grotesque degree when it's finally her turn to wake up, Elisabeth never once attempts to communicate this blunder to Sue. As Sue's exploitation of her time and abuse of Elisabeth's body spins out of control, it's implausible to me that Elisabeth's desperation wouldn't compel her to appeal to Sue through simple written communication, or a message on the billboard they take turns obsessively gazing at through the apartment's picture window, or an instagram reel conveying the severity of the consequences of Sue's hubris. I mean come on they live in the same apartment. A post-it on the mirror of that hideous bathroom would have been a great start! Attempt something! Anything!
Anyway definitely watch Eternal Sunshine and Party Girl. And I'm happy to keep offering cultural criticism nobody asked for, but also here for you on the advice front!
Love, Caroline
Submit advice questions here: https://www.carolinemitgang.com/about