Film Review – The Substance

It’s been a little while since a filmmaker attempted to play with the particulars of the body horror subgenre. Writer/director Coralie Fargeat (2017’s “Revenge”) takes the challenge quite seriously with “The Substance,” which is an audacious endeavor that transforms the relationship between youth and aging as it pertains to the Female Experience and turns it into a battle of flesh-poking, fluid-draining escalation. The feature is a juicy one, handed a thorough Euro-cinema treatment by the helmer, who’s out to turn stomachs with this visceral understanding of self-loathing and fame. “The Substance” gets ugly, quite often, and it doesn’t really know when to quit, but it mostly stuns as a display of outstanding makeup effects and mysterious atmosphere. And star Demi Moore delivers complete submission to Fargeat’s vision, giving one of her all-time best performances. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com