Film review: Demi Moore shines in her comeback role in The Substance

Her character is offered a substance to revitalise her life and career

Demi Moore stars in The Substance

• The Substance 
• ★★★☆☆ 
• Cinematic release

Once an Oscar winner and now a 50-something host of a TV fitness show, Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is offered The Substance (16s) as a way to revitalise her life and her career.

The catch is that ingesting the substance creates two persons from one by process of mitosis, and the newly minted Sue (Margaret Qualley) — Elisabeth’s younger, more beautiful alter-ego — soon proves herself a fame-hungry ingénue who feasts on Elisabeth’s energy.

Written and directed by Coralie Fargeat, The Substance is a body-horror satire on the beauty myth that starts out strong but quickly becomes a rather heavy-handed take on The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Moore shines in her big comeback role and fully deserves all the plaudits for her courageous performance. Overall, though, the grotesque characters (most notably Dennis Quaid as a scenery-chewing TV producer), too much deliberately prurient camerawork and some outbursts of gratuitous violence all combine to hammer flat the nuances of the entirely valid points Fargeat’s film sets out to make.