Turns out, Stanley Kubrick isn’t dead. He was just on The Substance.
Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance plays like Kubrick’s ghostly hand is guiding us through Hollywood’s unlit corridors, where beauty becomes a prison and vanity is weapon and wound.
This isn’t just a horror film; it’s a graphic meditation on fame’s slow rot, dressed in Kubrick’s chilling, meticulous style. And it’s the most unsettling film of the year.
Demi Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle is a once-dazzling star now clinging to relevance, introduced with all the glamor of a Hollywood legend. But when Elisabeth encounters “The Substance”—a drug that promises to turn back time—the story veers into a nightmare drawn straight from Kubrick’s detached, clinical eye. From the carpet to the colors to the cold stare, The Substance is homage to the late director.
But make no mistake: This movie has turn-away gore, which perhaps is the point of a movie impaling the business of turning heads.
Elisabeth takes the drug, and the transformation that follows is not just physical but existential, dragging her into a horror that feels vast, lonely, and unrelenting.
Each step feels like a crossing over, leaving her humanity behind in pursuit of an ideal that’s cold and unforgiving. The effect is almost surreal, as if Elisabeth has become part of some inhuman experiment, a subject to be observed rather than a person with agency.
As Elisabeth’s transformation continues, we’re thrust into hallways carpeted in that unforgettable blood-red pattern from The Shining. It’s a subtle detail, but one that speaks volumes: she’s lost in a maze of her own making, each turn leading her deeper into the horror of her obsession.
When she finally meets Sue—the younger, flawless version of herself, played with haunting restraint by Margaret Qualley—it’s in a setting that could only be Kubrick’s: a bar so still and sterile it feels like The Shining’s Gold Room reimagined.
The conversation between Elisabeth and Sue is unspoken, a Kubrickian standoff where they sit across from each other, the ideal and the broken. Elisabeth’s face, once hopeful, now reflects Kubrick’s cold gaze—a character who sees the cost of her choices and is horrified by them.
And of course, The Substance is more than a commentary on beauty; it’s also about addiction, as Elisabeth’s dependency on her newfound youth deepens.
There’s irony here, as Elisabeth’s fall parallels the same fate as those chasing their own heroin(e), sinking deeper into a habit that promises escape but leaves ruin in its wake. This addiction, however, isn’t about euphoria; it’s about identity, a craving to hold on to something that’s slipping, even as it’s devouring her.
As Elisabeth loses herself entirely, Fargeat’s direction becomes Kubrickian in its cold, analytical gaze. We’re no longer watching Elisabeth; we’re observing her, as if she’s another artifact of Hollywood’s obsession with beauty, dissected under fluorescent lights. Elisabeth’s pursuit of perfection has rendered her as cold and mechanical as a bathroom sink.
The Substance doesn’t offer solace. Fargeat, like Kubrick, is unflinching, her vision of fame and beauty as clinical as it is haunting. Elisabeth’s journey isn’t a tale of redemption or self-discovery; it’s a warning, a brutal reminder that the pursuit of beauty costs not just our youth — but our very selves.
There may be only one self, but what happens when that face isn’t yours?
