‘The Substance’: Misogyny Metastasises

Do not see this film if you cannot watch Body Horror or Gore. This is not a mild movie - there is more gore, guts, blood and mess than there is dialogue. Please, please, please, don’t see it if you can’t handle that.

This is a film about women who would die to be good, to be better, to be their best selves. Who would rather risk it all than exist in the idea that their time is up, their luck has run out, that men are discarding them, that the world would soon forget them.

It is a concept that deserves a bloody, gory exploration — I have felt for too long that few have taken this concept far enough, to the messy place of catharsis, to the violent place. Patriarchy is violence, but the internal misogyny is horror.

This film offers no solutions, it offers no conclusion, it merely takes one dark, lonely and unforgiving feeling, makes it unambiguously large and surreal, and then pushes it to its limit.

For the girls with eating disorders, nicotine addictions, regular botox injections, 10 step skincare routines, who got a BBL in the Dominican Republic, who have been hospitalised at a time of crisis, and for all the girls who didn’t survive themselves — this is a cathartic film, if you’re ready for the Body Horror and Gore.

It feels like an exposure of a horror that’s been kept behind consultation room walls and bathroom doors, a feeling that we’ve all come to learn to deal with completely on our own, that cannot be mentioned.

In addition, it covers the way women throw older generations under the bus, and how when we leave each other behind, the problem metastasises. It’s a frank and absurd reminder, but it’s one that some people need. I worry it won’t make it to the eyeballs that need to see it, but one can hope.