The substance: body horror and recoil
We often reserve body horror for the truly grotesque. The unsettling. The look-away-from-the-screen moments. Horror. Filmic scenes where there is gore, a stray intestine and something that makes the brain go, “that is not where it's meant to be”. But what exactly is body horror and why is it used?
The body horror genre can include the human vessel undergoing a mutative transformation or form of bodily degeneration that is intended to evoke a psychological reaction of disgust or anxiety from the viewers. In doing so, creators of these artistic adaptations aim to comment on society, its subsequent breakdown and on the body itself.
Cue the 2024 phenomenon, The Substance, led by actresses Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley and directed by Coralie Fargeat. The film follows has-been celebrity, Elisabeth (Moore) and how she grapples with her ageing body in Hollywood where she is being faded out for someone younger. She is offered a black-market drug that promises to create a version of herself that is younger and better. But the price of youth is high and a challenge to pay.
The drug, or The Substance, works by duplicating the user’s DNA and spawning a new and younger version of herself from her ruptured back. From the top of her spine to the base, her body splits open like a pregnant orange. And out pops Sue (Qualley). Beautiful. Youthful. Not a wrinkle to be seen. She has been born anew.
A war is waged against weight and wrinkles in modern society. We take drugs, like the concoction in The Substance, to make ourselves de-age and turn back the clock on our bodies. We pump our veins, stomachs and blood with the next IT thing that is trending. At least, this is what The Substance is commenting on – an obsession with youth. Slim bodies, white teeth and unblemished skin.
But the mirage of perfection is broken when Sue’s body experiences a malfunction. A bubble appears to arise from her otherwise-perfect backside while filming a dance workout in front of a studio of people. In terror, she flees to her dressing room where she reaches into her skin and pulls out a fried chicken thigh – like popping a zit, it leaves her body with a morbid and satisfactory pop.
As Sue experiences more of what life has to offer her in the form of Friday night parties, sex and drinking, her counterpart body, Elisabeth, suffers the consequences. Viewers see a real-time cause-and-effect of how misusing our bodies while young may have negative consequences once we’re older. As Sue takes more and more time to enjoy her life, Elisabeth wastes away and eventually turns into an elderly woman – she has become the very thing she feared. She hides her body away from the public, representing how society views the ageing body of women. Her long and hooked nose aligns her with the fairytale stereotype of evil witches in the woods who lure young beauties to steal their youth, and therefore, she becomes villainized and disdainful. She becomes an outcast to society, while Sue becomes a symbol of the ideal female body. She is plastered on billboards, attends late-night interviews on television and receives the opportunity to host the New Year’s Eve show.
At the risk of losing her perfect body, Sue returns to The Substance. Against its warnings for single use, she injects it into her body. What is birthed from Sue’s body is a human-like amalgamation of parts. Neither Elisbeth nor Sue. Nothing is where it should be. Arms protrude. Hair falls out and an extra head demands attention. The original host, Elisabeth, has pushed her body too far in the name of beauty and what has resulted is her worst nightmare. Viewers recoil as the body has been transformed beyond being recognizable as Elisabeth. The Substance continuously mutates and breaks down the human body that once was Elisabeth, resulting in a puddle of goo on the sidewalk that, anticlimactically, gets mopped up by a passing street cleaner.
Once The Substance concludes and viewers are left staring at a blanket screen with a hazy shape of their reflection, it leaves echoes asking them, “how far would you go to be youthful and beautiful?”
Was the cost worth it in the end?