The Substance (2024)
- Rated 16
- 7.3/10 (via IMDb)
The Substance is a film about self-worth and self-destruction. The titular green “substance” allows 50-year-old actress Elisabeth Sparkles to create a younger, “perfect” copy of herself. However, there are strict rules that must be observed for this process and its maintenance – and throughout the film, due to the struggle with self-worth, more and more rules are broken.
One of the main rules is that the substance can only be used once and the rest must be disposed of. However, when everything in Elisabeth’s (or Sue’s) world starts to break apart, she injects the substance into the copy’s body one more time.
The result is a mutated creature with too many limbs, eyes, and teeth, as if Elisabeth and Sue had been thrown into a blender and then baked for too long. A truly horrific ending for the promising cosmetics: “It changed my life.”
The monster named “Monstro Elisasue” ultimately finds redemption and melts away on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. However, there must have been a test for the realization of the single-use of the substance with a similar result. The “result” that Elisabeth seems to hear when picking up the new substance halfway through the film. A suffering, unintelligible growl underlying the shine of corporate design – a truly horrific fate.
Despite the uncomfortable themes and imagery addressed in horror films, the genre has a large fan base. Not just in films, but also in other media like books or video games. However, those fans mentioned can willingly engage with the horror of the stories. Those who saw the wrong movies during their childhood, even though they were supposed to be children’s films, may not agree: Here are 10 movies from your childhood that you watched far too early
