The Substance

For certain movies it will be a challenge to follow my current self-imposed guidelines of identifying two (2) elements that I liked, and one (1) element that I didn't like, but I'll do my best:

Coralie Fargeat's The Substance has an interesting premise, and its visual representation of that premise is bold and vivid.  Fargeat's decision to deal with the topic of "not feeling comfortable in your own skin" by literally having someone new tear their way out of your body, gets right to the point.  Some likely will refer to The Substance as an allegory of our society's obsession with youth and physical beauty; that would be an incorrect characterization, since an allegory implies some amount of shrouding the message, whereas The Substance slams it in your face.

Demi Moore and her offspring (outspring?), played by Margaret Qualley are well paired, reminding me somewhat of the casting of Tom Hanks and Michael Conner Humphreys in Forrest Gump.  What I mean is that both sets of characters reference each other, and have certain mannerisms that remind of us the fact that these people, while different, are also the same.  I really like that Hanks based his depiction of Forrest Gump on the performance by Humphreys, for two reasons:  1) Hanks, being the better, and more experienced actor could strengthen the entire film by studying and using components of the younger and less experienced actor's performance.  2) Since Hanks was playing the adult version of the character, it makes sense that he would incorporate mannerisms and speech patterns from the younger version of the character.  In the case of The Substance, my impression is that Qualley probably made more of an effort to match her character to Moore's, but now I'm getting into semantics.  My point is, go watch Forrest Gump.

All of the things that I liked were quickly overshadowed as the third act began, which was excessively long, bloody, gory, and "jello-y".  I realize that I'm not the target audience for this kind of pop-horror schlock, and quite frankly I don't understand why anyone would enjoy this kind of movie.  If I'm being honest, the climactic pre-finale was reminiscent of the opening scene to Blade, both being literal bloodbaths, and I've heard (although I've never seen it myself), that Brian De Palma's Carrie has the quintessential bloodbath scene.  I'm not sure why I'm OK with the Blade scene, but found the one in The Substance to be pointless; perhaps it's because the Blade scene actually sets the stage for the story that's being told, while The Substance is just trying to disturb us.  In any case, I think that it would be more accurate to refer to them as blood showers, since the blood is being sprayed from above, as opposed to being held in some tub or other container, but there I go getting into semantics again.