Editorials
‘Reality+’ – ‘The Substance’ Director Already Made the Perfect Body Horror Companion Piece
Coralie Fargeat’s ‘The Substance’ is a body horror masterpiece that’s as smart as it is gross, but the film’s exploration of vanity, desperation, and the male gaze have coursed through her entire filmography.
“Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? Younger, more beautiful, more perfect.”
This article contains spoilers for The Substance.
There have been sensationalist advertisements for radical, renegade filmmaking as far back as the days of William Castle’s boundary-breaking cinematic experiences. In an age where 20-minute standing ovations at film festivals are the norm and horror film screenings are accompanied by nurses, priests, and barf bags, it’s become increasingly easy to tone out and dismiss buzzy advertisements. It may therefore seem redundant and hollow to praise Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance as a body horror masterpiece that will make the audience scream, squirm, and spew, but it’s a rare case of a movie that actually rises to the occasion and deserves such hyperbolized praise.
The Substance tells a story of reinvention and rejuvenation as Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) turns 50 and suddenly becomes damaged goods, yesterday’s news, and unemployed. Elisabeth learns about an experimental substance that doesn’t just promise to solve her problems, but transform her into her best self. What follows is one of 2024’s most provocative and provoking horror films that puts Hollywood – and society – under the microscope. The Substance tackles vanity, desperation, and the predatory, unhealthy nature of the male gaze with vicious bite. However, this revolutionary horror film becomes even more potent when it’s viewed in the grander context of Fargeat’s filmography, specifically her short film, Reality+.
The Substance has a lot to unpack, but part of its success as a horror film boils down to how it’s essentially a two-and-a-half hour Tales From the Crypt episode. There’s a building dread and tension, right from the film’s start, that Elisabeth Sparkle’s story is not going to end well. However, the way in which everything unravels is identical to the moral grandstanding and cautionary nature of Tales From the Crypt. In fact, Tales From the Crypt’s fourth episode, “Only Sin Deep,” based on Haunt of Fear #24, tells a very similar story about fleeting beauty, greed, status and the inherent friction and power dynamics that surround gender. Lea Thompson’s Sylvia Vane (see what they did there?) takes an easy payout through supernatural circumstances that reward her with riches and the “perfect” life, albeit in exchange for her beauty.
Both “Only Sin Deep” and The Substance create dramatic tension through the loss of their protagonist’s beauty, but Tales From the Crypt unsurprisingly presents a more simplistic and pulpy take on this monkey’s paw narrative. If nothing else, the juxtaposition highlights how the horror genre has been telling these types of stories for over 35 years, yet they’ve become infinitely more powerful, nuanced, and critical. Fargeat has cited both David Lynch and David Cronenberg as some of the biggest inspirations on her filmmaking career and it’s hard to not think of Mulholland Dr.’s uncomfortable audition scenes and the hyper-stylized glitz and glamor of its dark presentation of Hollywood or the gender-driven body horror of The Brood during The Substance. Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer’s breakout feature, Starry Eyes, is also another appropriate companion piece that equates Hollywood’s casting couch and “meat market” to a demonic pact that’s literally akin to selling one’s soul — and beauty — to the better.
Brian Yuzna’s stomach-turning magnum opus, Society, is another horror movie that will inevitably enter conversations about The Substance. Society uses body horror, imposter syndrome, and beauty standards as more of a commentary on social status and class struggles, rather than specifically gender-driven strife that’s the result of fading looks. However, Society still wrestles with many of the same ideas through an equally gross and obtrusive lens. The horror genre has been fascinated by this parallel for decades, but it’s Fargeat’s The Substance that perfects the idea and pushes it to its bloody, bewildering, beautiful apex. It’s also no coincidence that The Substance is the only film from this lot that’s actually presented by a female filmmaker who implicitly understands the industry’s predatory and skewed nature.
The Substance is such a powerful encapsulation of these ideas, but it’s important to recognize that these themes of insecurity, vanity, false beauty, and the male gaze have been prevalent through Fargeat’s entire filmography. The Substance becomes the “final form” of this thesis that takes these ideas to the most exciting and visceral places. That being said, it’s important to recognize that Fargeat has already made the perfect body horror companion piece for The Substance that helped her crystalize these themes. Reality+, Fargeat’s 2014 short film, is the perfect aperitif for The Substance and in many ways it feels like the latter couldn’t exist without it.
Reality+ is set in the near future and centers around a neurological chip, Reality+, that alters one’s perception so that they see themselves as the perfect physical specimen. This augmented reality is also experienced by anyone else who has also equipped themselves with a Reality+ chip, which leads to a vain feedback loop of delusion. Much like in The Substance, this perfection is limited. Reality+ can only be activated for a 12-hour stretch before the human body needs to reboot and recover from this mental stress. Reality+ and The Substance are equally interested in the physical and mental anguish of this process as they are in the beauty and validation that are behind it.
Reality+ and The Substance are both set in worlds where chiseled bodies and attractive individuals flood billboards and are inescapable. They both feature reflective shots that echo each other where their leads – Vincent Dangeville (Vincent Colombe) and Elisabeth Sparkle – painstakingly scrutinize themselves in front of a mirror. There’s also a shorthand in both where scars are tools that are used to recognize who is in the “program” and special, like they’ve been branded by beauty. However, Reality+’s perception-altering tech is more accepted and mainstream than the secretive, cult-like institution that pulls the strings in The Substance. There’s even a destination, Club+, where Reality+ users can congregate, party, and indulge in heightened hedonism. It still feels like both films could be set in the same universe — or even involve the same company — and that Reality+ is the safer evolution of what’s going on in The Substance.
Reality+ has a slightly different vibe than The Substance in the sense that its protagonist is a man, not a woman. It doesn’t explore the same woes of aging and becoming irrelevant, but its society is still painted in a comparable degree of inadequacy and insecurity. That being said, it’s curious that the leads in both stories are far from unattractive. However, the fact that they feel like they need to do this to succeed is telling and a reflection of just how judgmental and cutthroat society has become. Elisabeth actually has a reason to engage in this process — she’s losing her job — but there’s no indication of how dire Vincent’s situation is and if anything is at stake other than his own vanity and lackluster sex life. Reality+ is presented as a privilege, perk, and luxury for the men in Reality+, whereas it’s necessary for survival and maintained relevance in The Substance.
Elisabeth does this to maintain her station and the life that she’s known, whereas Vincent does it to get a taste of something he’s never experienced before, but still feels like he deserves. It’s triggered through male hubris, rather than female fear and the patriarchal gaze. It’s telling that Reality+ doesn’t begin with a scene where Vincent gets dumped, mocked by women in public, or turned down on some dating app. There’s no insight into why he does this rather than feeling like he deserves better. Alternatively, The Substance really lets you understand Elisabeth’s plight and her reluctance to even engage in such a process before it happens. In Reality+, Vincent, presumably, jumps right into this with zero qualms.
Both movies also explore the idea of becoming greedier and less grateful for this incredible science and opportunity. These addictions become so extreme that Vincent and Sue (Margaret Qualley) find ways to hack the system and “jailbreak” these technological advancements so that they can be their best selves 24/7 without ever having to accept “reality.” The Substance explores the debilitating consequences and side effects of abusing this system, while Reality+ doesn’t necessarily highlight this side of the story and concludes with more of a playful irony. Reality+ isn’t nearly as bleak and destructive in its storytelling, but both films still ultimately argue that the subjects would have been happier in their original states and in their own skin, so to speak, while this “grass is always greener” mentality reigns supreme. The Substance’s dark and destructive ending may be yet another way for Fargeat to reinforce that this vain system of perfection is rigged against women and far more dangerous. Elisabeth, Sue, and Monstro Elisasue are pushed to brutal breaking points where they cease to exist, whereas Reality+’s Vincent is ultimately no worse for wear, even if his pride and confidence have taken a hit.
It’s also rather telling that The Substance is a film that’s consistently filtered and subjected to the male gaze, which hits even harder because of its female protagonists. There are so many shots that are presented in jarring fish eye lenses and other stylistic devices that skew the world’s presentation so everything feels gross and artificial. Reality+ takes a similar, yet contrasting approach where the entire world is presented as artificial, but glossy and perfect as both the protagonist and the audience experience everything through the Reality+ filter. Reality+ makes the audience complicit in the male gaze, whereas The Substance subjects them to it so the gross consequences hang over the viewer and are inescapable. By the end of The Substance, the audience wishes that they had a Reality+ filter to sanitize and censor the experience. Too bad. This is real life and it’s going to hideously mutate and spray blood all over you. Hope you brought a poncho.
The Substance subjects the audience to the male gaze and leaves them feeling gross and violated, but it also makes the audience complicit in this experience — particularly during Sue’s extremely over the top aerobic segments that reach the heights of parody and then twerk in its face. The Substance wants the audience to receive that hit of dopamine — like their molly just kicked in — and then wrestle with the crash and comedown. It’s a creative way to weaponize the male gaze where the audience — and Sue — are just as titillated. It’s a complex evolution of what’s going on in Reality+ that occasionally captures the same glossy filter, but with an internal disgust and gag factor that’s completely absent in Reality+.
2017’s Revenge, while a very different story than what’s going on in Reality+ and The Substance, still breeds conflict from the male gaze and how it victimizes and destroys. Jen (Matilda Lutz) experiences a metamorphosis that’s nearly as extreme as what Elisabeth endures and is the direct result of her beauty and the assumptions that accompany it. Jen is put in a life or death situation where she’s discarded and treated like trash because of her physical appearance and her submissive relationship with men and her problems arise when she pushes back and tries to refuse the station that she’s been slotted into in life. In Revenge, Jen brings about her own evolution rather than becoming a cog in the system and it’s why she survives the film and actually experiences some semblance of a happy ending.
Revenge is the perfect stepping stone between Reality+ and The Substance that reminds audiences of society’s pressures and how the best tools for survival lie inside us, not elsewhere, manufactured by corporations. Jen has to fight and claw her way up through the patriarchy and bring herself back to life, but she still does it and becomes a phoenix of female empowerment. It’s a glimpse of how everything can go right before it all falls apart in The Substance. Elisabeth doesn’t pull herself off a tree branch like Jen; she impales herself with one and then pretends that she likes it and smiles through the pain.
The Substance is captivating, condemning, lightning in a bottle filmmaking that’s one of the best body horror stories in decades. Fargeat has distilled and bottled something truly special here, but her potent potion works even better when it’s viewed in the context of an ever-evolving filmography that’s consistently experimented with these themes and finally perfected its foundation. There’s just enough gore, guts, and soul slathered on the screen for its subject matter to be ready for its big close up and flash a toothy, blood-soaked smile.
“Pretty girls should always smile,” after all.
‘The Substance’ is now playing in theaters. ‘Reality+’ is available to stream on YouTube.
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
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