Review: 4-star ‘The Substance’ with Demi Moore elevates ‘beauty horror’ to new heights

Our world does not often offer a safe space for female rage. But French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat has carved out a place to explore that emotion in her work.

She shapes that anger into a spear to skewer society’s sexism, revealing the restrictive nature of toxic patriarchy, and allows her female protagonists to violently break free from those expectations.

Her 2017 debut, the stylish action thriller “Revenge,” took on rape culture, and in her sophomore feature, “The Substance,” she trains her lens on beauty standards in Hollywood. What Fargeat sees isn’t anything pretty.

Working with cinematographer Benjamin Kracun and editors Jerome Eltabet and Valentin Féron, Fargeat creates an outlandish parody of the “male gaze” until she gleefully punishes the viewer for looking at all. The gaze is both outward and inward, seeking to understand how women are looked at and how they look at themselves.

Demi Moore plays actress Elisabeth Sparkle, a once-lauded ingenue who now hosts a popular TV fitness show. On her 50th birthday, she’s abruptly cut loose by a repulsively leering studio executive, Harvey (Dennis Quaid).

“At 50 it just stops,” he sputters through a mouthful of shrimp, sending her on her way.

After an encounter with a strange nurse, Elisabeth finds out about a mysterious beauty/biohacking company called the Substance that promises a better, more beautiful version of herself. The only rules are to “respect the balance,” and to “remember that you are one.” She shoots herself up with “activator,” and out crawls Sue (Margaret Qualley), young, supple and smooth.

What would you do with a second chance at youth? Sue marches right back to that office and auditions to be “the new Elisabeth Sparkle.” The show must go on, after all, and now, it’s pumped up.

Sue is like a luxury sports car, her slick curves clad in shiny metallics. On screen, we see her as an empowered goddess performing for the cameras. Behind closed doors, Sue’s physicality flips from nubile seductress to startlingly strong predator. She only grows more powerful as Elisabeth degrades into oblivion, isolated and destroyed.

If Qualley’s portrayal of Sue is primarily located in the body, Moore’s is almost entirely in her eyes, and they are the key to her performance, often because they are the only way we recognize Elisabeth as she goes through transformation after transformation. Elisabeth’s eyes are constantly searching, worrying and condemning, usually directed at her own reflection, while Sue’s blue, determined stare is directed out at the world like she’s about to attack. For a brief moment, their irises share the same cornea, but rarely the same emotion.

While “The Substance” is desperately sad it also is a darkly hilarious satire laced with outrageous camp. The film nods to ‘80s aerobics and “Toddlers & Tiaras” and has bright, obnoxious colors juxtaposing shocking body horror.

Films such as “Carrie,” “The Shining” and “Frankenstein” are referenced here as well as gross-out exploitation horror comedies and chainsaw slasher flicks. Combining these influences with a sense of enraged audacity, Fargeat delivers a macabre, funny, tragic, absurd and grotesque brutal “beauty horror” that elevates the genre to unprecedented heights.

In Fargeat’s feminist fractured fairy tale, we are confronted with the mirror she has created, a perverse vision of Hollywood where fame is a disease, beauty is a drug and men are buffoons. At two hours and 20 minutes, there’s something cathartically cleansing and transcendent in enduring this visceral ride. It is pure cinema, layered visual and sonic storytelling anchored by Moore and Qualley’s astonishing, fearless performances.

If there’s a happy ending to be found in “The Substance,” it’s that finally Elisabeth’s view is turned away from herself, toward the sky, where she can enjoy looking at the stars, both real and remembered.

4 stars out of 4

Rated: R for violent content, gore, graphic nudity and language.

Where: In theaters Friday.