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THE SUBSTANCE

"Bloody Marxist Feminist Excess"

Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)
Entertainment Quality:
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Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

THE SUBSTANCE is an artsy horror movie starring Demi Moore. Demi plays Elizabeth Sparkle, a fading Hollywood starlet whose exercise show is losing viewers. She gets a mysterious offer to try a new black market substance that replicates her cells to create a separate, younger, better version of herself. The older woman and the younger woman must trade off every seven days while the other one remains dormant. However, the younger self gets greedy and abuses the process. Her actions lead to a bloody, gruesome mess – literally.

THE SUBSTANCE deserves kudos for denouncing society’s focus on youth, fame and physical beauty. This problem affects men, but it’s especially hard on women as they age. It becomes clear that, because of the pressures of fame, Demi Moore’s character has spent too much time focusing on her outward appearance than her inner beauty. THE SUBSTANCE has some powerful metaphors, especially the final shot. However, it has a strong Marxist, humanist, feminist attitude that takes these themes to super-violent, bloody, silly extremes. THE SUBSTANCE has more than 15 “f” words, gruesome images and extreme nudity.

Content:

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Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:
Very strong Marxist, humanist politically correct, feminist worldview the movie’s major themes, which denounces modern people’s focus on youth, fame and physical beauty;

Foul Language:
At least 19 obscenities (mostly “f” words), and three light profanities;

Violence:
Very strong, gory, bloody violence, and some dark psychological violence includes a gruesome looking, genetically altered female “body” spews blood all over an audience in a theater being used as for a TV studio, a vicious bloody murder, woman splits into two versions of herself, and the versions have to be dormant every other week, but the younger version gets greedy and hides the older version in a dark room behind the wall in their bathroom (this causes the older version’s body to deteriorate and age horribly), younger woman gruesomely stitches up the slit in the older woman’s back, and the movie’s ending is literally a bloody mess;

Sex:
Implied fornication and multiple images of lewd dancing, plus the extreme sexual nudity in the movie;

Nudity:
Some images of full frontal female nudity, and many images of upper and rear female nudity;

Alcohol Use:
Some alcohol use and drunkenness;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:
Smoking and drug abuse, plus a middle aged woman uses a newly developed drug that splits her into two people, the older original version, and a younger version; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:
Lying, personal greed gets out of hand, and older producer and older businessmen emotionally abuse women and treat them as objects to pursue the bottom line.

More Detail:

THE SUBSTANCE stars Demi Moore as a beautiful, fading celebrity who uses a black market cell-replicating substance to create a separate, younger, better version of herself, but the younger self gets greedy and abuses the process, leading to a bloody, gruesome mess. THE SUBSTANCE rightly denounces modern society’s focus on youth, fame and physical beauty, and the shallow people in the celebrity culture who treat women caught up in that culture so badly, but it has a strong Marxist, humanist, feminist attitude that takes these themes to such violent, bloody extremes that it blunts its message and metaphors.

Played by Demi Moore, Elizabeth Sparkle is a beloved actress who rises to the top of fame and gets her own star on Hollywood Blvd. However, her acting days are over, and she’s reduced to hosting a popular exercise TV show. Even her popularity there is fading as she gets older, though.

Elizabeth gets a mysterious pitch one day to try a youth restoring drug. She makes a phone call and picks up the product behind a nondescript door in a scary, isolated alley. The “activator” substance comes with a liquid food supply for two people.

In a bizarre scene, Elizabeth takes off her clothes and injects herself with the activator. Painfully, Elizabeth is rendered unconscious, her back splits open and out pops another body. The new body is a beautiful much younger woman. The younger woman becomes conscious. She uses some medical sutures from the contents of the package Elizabeth received to stitch up her back. She then takes one of the seven-day liquid food packets and sets up an IV for the still unconscious Elizabeth. (There’s also some kind of blood transfusion kit for the two bodies.)

There’s a catch, however. The two women must switch back and forth every seven days.

The new woman calls herself Sue. She soon becomes the new exercise show queen when Elizabeth’s fired by her smarmy producer, Harvey, played by Dennis Quaid in a delicious performance. She lies to Harvey, saying that every seven days, she must travel home to the Midwest to tend to her sick mother.

The situation between the two women turns sour when Sue decides that she’s not going back into the closet every seven days. Her selfish decision leads to a bloody mess, literally, including murder.

THE SUBSTANCE deserves some kudos for denouncing modern society’s focus on youth, fame and physical beauty. This problem also affects men, but it’s especially hard on women as they age. Thus, for example, only a few actresses can survive Hollywood’s constant focus on finding the next new pretty young ingenue. The movie has a couple excellent metaphors to represent this theme. In fact, the final shot in THE SUBSTANCE brilliantly expresses the movie’s theme of the fading nature of fame, youth and physical beauty. Even a beautiful sunset or sunrise, though created by God, eventually fades. Also, at one point, the movie uses some music from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic movie, VERTIGO, where James Stewart plays an ex-cop who’s psychologically destroyed when he becomes obsessed with the physical appearance of a woman created as a total fantasy. Of course, it becomes clear in THE SUBSTANCE that, because of the pressures of fame, Elizabeth has spent too much time cultivating her outward appearance, and not enough time focusing on her inner beauty.

Leave it to the Marxist, humanist feminists in the entertainment industry, however, to beat a dead horse. Despite its clever final metaphor, THE SUBSTANCE devolves into a silly, outrageous and gruesome bloody mess – literally. In fact, at one point, human blood is spewed all over the audience at a live TV show that Sue is supposed to do as the new queen of television.

In addition to its bloody, gruesome ending, which includes a vicious murder, THE SUBTANCE has more than 15 “f” words and includes lots of strong foul language and extreme female nudity. The camera doesn’t shy away from filming the extreme nudity when a naked Sue emerges from the body of a naked Elizabeth.



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