The Substance (2024)

The critic hails it as a magnificent, wildly entertaining shocker and the birth of a new horror maestro, praising its extreme, disgusting, and thoughtful take on pressures on women along with strong performances.

The review hails the film as the best and maddest of the year so far, an instant classic that amps up Cronenberg-style gore into a delirious, entertaining blitzkrieg with brilliant, bold work from Moore.

The film offers a refreshing female perspective on the female body in horror, focusing on the emotional and physical turmoil of menopause rather than reproduction. Demi Moore delivers a fearless, exposed performance as the lead in this excessive, blood-soaked satire.

The critic hails the film as a visionary, cathartically fun extreme feminist body-horror work with garish accessibility and primal vision, praising Fargeat's stylized aggro voice and fusion of influences into something original, along with Moore's fearless, rippled performance and Qualley's magnetic confidence. The grotesque climax and metaphors of cosmetic enhancement are singled out as resonant and ambitious.

The critic finds Fargeat's follow-up a perversely enjoyable if unsubtle body horror that revels in grotesque excess and delivers gory mayhem to grimly funny effect. Moore's performance is highlighted as a gleeful middle finger to ageing gracefully.

The critic praises this unsubtle, gross-out body horror as a glorious takedown of anti-ageing and beauty culture, with pleasurably disgusting effects that effectively satirise the pressures on women while escalating the horror to hysterical extremes.

The critic finds the film an unpleasant and ugly screed that places blame for impossible beauty standards on women and offers nothing novel, becoming as shallow as what it critiques despite its showy third act.

The film fails to move beyond its stylistic trappings of body horror to deliver substantive critique, instead tangling in its own metaphors about ageism, self-hatred and beauty standards while relying on shock and grotesque imagery that ultimately reinforces rather than challenges prejudices.

The critic praises the fearless, ferocious performances by Moore and Qualley and Fargeat's flair for high-energy editing, bold visuals, and grotesque shocks, but finds the film superficial with recycled dialogue, no character depth, and a heroine lacking layers or interests beyond superficial ambitions. The visual style and influences are singled out as both a strength and limitation.

The critic praises the potent body horror executed with skill and compassion, excellent performances from Moore and Qualley, and its fresh insights into how the entertainment industry traumatises women, while noting it occasionally risks overplaying its hand.

The critic calls the film a thrilling watch with strong visual style and a committed performance from Demi Moore, but finds its ideological ambitions slight and its argument about the politics of ageing confused and hollow.

Fargeat delivers an exhilarating feminist body-horror freak show that holds the viewer despite being unwieldy. The critic singles out Moore's naturalistic, career-best performance and the film's bold stylistic homages for praise.

The critic finds the film an uneven genre offering boosted by formal ambition and Demi Moore's performance. She praises Moore's visceral desperation while noting thin plotting that strains under its runtime and repetitive scenes.

The critic views the film as a bold body-horror satire on the pursuit of eternal youth and Hollywood ageism, calling it a feminist cri de coeur with a spectacularly sanguinary climax, but faults its scattershot dualism and questions whether its visual extremes reinforce objectification. Moore's desolate mirror scene is singled out as the most shattering moment.

The story of a woman undergoing a procedure to regain youth is puerile and intellectually specious, using hollow feminist rhetoric to justify seedy close-ups and exploitation. It deploys leaden messaging around beauty standards while indulging in sleaze-sploitation.

The film is disgusting, twisted, and darkly funny, with graphic body horror and strong performances from Moore and Qualley. The critic notes its divisive reception at Cannes and highlights its memorable, revolting imagery and satire on aging and objectification.

A bombastic, sickening satire of society’s obsession with youth and beauty featuring brilliant and heartbreaking performances, grotesque prosthetics and visual nods that make it a future cult classic packing a real punch.

The critic hails it as a bloody, brilliant, bonkers body horror masterpiece with an impossible-to-miss message about women's struggles under rigid beauty standards, delivered through fearless performances and a farcical, shocking freak show.

Demi Moore gives the performance of her career in this original, pitiless body horror that subverts the male gaze with its honest and non-titillating depiction of flesh, excess and the pressures on women.

The critic finds the body horror stylish and the finale bonkers and effective but notes the visual maximalism overwhelms character development and prioritizes style over substance.

The critic describes it as a blunt, garish, and excessively nasty yet undeniably entertaining body horror that thrives on over-the-top camp and practical effects excess.

The critic hails the film as a riotous, dreamlike horror-thriller that skewers ageism and sexism with over-the-top body horror. Moore and Qualley deliver dynamic, committed performances in a gory, visually inventive spectacle.

The critic calls it a shocking, darkly hilarious body horror that exceeds expectations from Fargeat's Revenge, praising Demi Moore's towering, fearless performance and the film's visual flair and fury in addressing beauty standards and self-hatred.

The critic finds the film a lurid, loud and lewd body horror that turns beauty standards inside out with gleeful excess. It is praised as great fun and boldly stark, with strong work from Moore and Qualley amid escalating grotesque effects.