Even if you haven't seen Revenge director Coralie Fargeat’s recently-released body horror satire, The Substance, there's a good chance you'll have heard that it's one of the most extreme, gruesome, and disturbing movie to hit theaters in quite some time.
The film - particularly the last 30 minutes or so - contains some truly surreal and repulsive moments, and there have been a number of reports of cinemagoers walking out before the end, and even some vomiting in the aisles.
The story focuses on an acclaimed actress turned celebrity host of a daytime exercise program (Demi Moore) who gets replaced by a younger star, sparking a confrontation between the two women that ultimately turns violent.
That's the basic outline. If you want the very gory details, spoilers will follow.
Moore's character, Elizabeth Sparkle, makes use of a secret cell replicating procedure to produce a younger, "more perfect" version of herself, Sue, played by Margaret Qualley.
Essentially two halves of the same person, Elizabeth and Sue soon become rivals, and end up breaking the "week on, week off" rule. Sue gets a taste of fame and decides not to wake Sparkle up, but continues to extract the serum from her older self's body needed to maintain her survival. Elizabeth begins to age rapidly, ultimately becoming a shrivelled husk.
When the serum dries up, Sue begins to fall apart (literally), and is forced to wake Liz, resulting in a brutal fight.
Sue is ultimately able to kill her older self in vicious fashion, but with no more serum, she takes the drastic measure of injecting what remains of the one-use-only Activator. This creates a grotesque hybrid mutant (named "Monstro EliaSue" in the subtitles), with protruding limbs and Sparkle's face left fused into its back in a permanent scream.
“It was torture,” Qualley told USA Today in a recent interview. “I had this awesome team of prosthetic artists that put it on me and took it off of me and got me through the day and made me laugh a couple of times while I was just on the brink of panic."
A new behind-the-scenes photo from the movie has now been shared online, giving us our first official look at Qualley in full prosthetics as the nightmarish clone.
In related news, THR is reporting that The Substance has been submitted for Golden Globes consideration as a musical/comedy, rather than a drama.
"Have you ever dreamed of a better version of yourself? You should try this new product: The Substance. It changed my life. With The Substance, you can generate another version of yourself: younger, more beautiful, more perfect… Just share the time. One week for one, one week for the other. A perfect balance of seven days. Easy, isn’t it? If you follow the instructions, what could go wrong?"