THE HORROR OF A HORRIBLE THIRD ACT
The Substance had me hooked — really, truly hooked — for 90 glorious minutes, and then … it feels like they yanked some middle school kid off the street and said, “Hey, wanna ruin a movie?” Because that’s the only explanation for how this thing nosedived so hard. Did no one have the guts to tell writer/director Coralie Fargeat that she was on the verge of greatness, only to throw it all away with a third act that’s about as coherent and satisfying as shitting your pants in a Burlington Coat Factory dressing room?
For the first hour and a half, I was mesmerized. The Substance was on its way to becoming something truly special. Hell, it could’ve been Black Mirror royalty. It built a world that felt fresh, original, even beautiful in a cold, dystopian way. There was a confidence in the direction, a distinct vision that balanced horror, sci-fi, and satire with a near-perfect execution. Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley were absolutely smashing it. Moore, in particular, delivered one of her most nuanced performances in years — icy, controlled, but with an undercurrent of something more sinister. Qualley brought her usual vulnerability and unpredictability, making her character both sympathetic and disconcerting.
The film’s concept — without giving away too many spoilers — taps into timely themes about consumption, vanity, and the exploitation of human bodies. It’s a surreal, disturbing look at the lengths people go to for eternal youth and beauty. For those first 90 of 140 minutes, I was convinced I was watching a modern classic in the making. Fargeat skillfully builds tension, creating a sense of unease that you can’t quite put your finger on. The world of The Substance feels lived-in and meticulously crafted, full of eerie details that made me excited to see where this wild, imaginative ride was taking me.
And then the third act happened — and it didn’t just drop the ball, it was a fucking 10-car pile-up on the 405. The film went from a masterpiece to a disaster in the blink of an eye. It’s as if it looked itself in the mirror and said, “Let’s become a shittier version of ourselves,” mimicking its own plot in the worst possible way. The elegant, suspenseful build-up gave way to cheap shock value and incoherent storytelling. Characters who had been complex and compelling devolved into clichés. Demi Moore’s performance, so carefully calibrated in the first two acts, was reduced to camp. Margaret Qualley, who had been the emotional core of the film, was given so little to work with that by the end, I felt like her character had been completely betrayed by the script.
It literally became a parody of itself, collapsing under the weight of its own stupidity. The thematic depth it had carefully built disintegrated into a chaotic mess of ideas that didn’t seem to know where they were going. I don’t know what happened — whether it was a bad rewrite, poor test screenings, or just sheer creative hubris — but the third act felt like it came from an entirely different, far worse film.
What started as a solid 3.5-star film didn’t just fall to a 1.5-star mess — it face planted into oblivion. And honestly, the collapse was so complete that by the time I walked out of the theater, I wasn’t even furious anymore, I was laughing. It was actually hilarious how badly Fargeat fucked up her movie. There I was, hoping for a genre-defining moment, only to get hit with an ending so incompetent it felt like a prank.
In the end, The Substance became the very thing it was critiquing: a hollow shell, beautiful on the outside but rotten within. And that’s the real tragedy. What could have been a razor-sharp commentary on our obsession with youth and beauty ended up being little more than an empty spectacle, a film that forgot its own substance.
The Substance
Working Title Films | a MUBI release
drama, horror | 140 minutes | rated R | UK/US/France | 2024
in wide release September 20, 2024
