I know I haven’t done that many PotWs on films I’ve never seen. Last year’s acclaimed horror smash ,The Substance, directed by Coralie Fargeat, falls into that category. Seeing trailers and hearing immense word-of-mouth about it continues to pique my interest. It looks and sounds like a prescient and viciously gory satire of the expectations that women of a certain age face in the entertainment industry.
Buy The Substance Blu-raykThe premise involves the iconic Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle, a faded Hollywood star turned exercise guru who is cast out by her unscrupulous producer Harvey (Dennis Quaid) because he is replacing her with a younger, more modern woman. After getting into a car accident and landing in a hospital, she meets a nurse who gives her a thumb drive containing “The Substance,” a serum that promises instant and unending youthfulness. She has to use this serum exactly as it is instructed, but her desperation gets the best of her, and she misuses it. In typical horror fashion, things go awry especially when it comes to the newly formed younger version of herself, Sue (Margaret Qualley), who tears herself from Elisabeth’s spinal cord.
Sure, it sounds like a film you need to watch more than once to let everything sink in, but reading the plot, it seems to be capturing the downside of celebrity. It seems to express gruesome ideas about vanity and about a make-or-break industry that tears you down as soon as it builds you up.
It also suggests that horror is the ultimate genre, because filmmakers still have the ability to come up with fresh stories about the increasingly bleak world we live in, more than any other genre. And this film sounds right up my alley.
Although the only special feature of both the 4K UHD and Blu-ray is a featurette, it still looks like a must have for film and horror lovers looking for cinema will innovative and fresh ways to shock you.
Other releases:
The Grifters (Criterion): A stylish neo-noir by Stephen Frears starring John Cusack as a small-time conman torn between his alliances with his mother (Anjelica Huston) and new girlfriend (Annette Bening), both are high-stakes grifters with plans of their own.
Jackie Brown (Lionsgate): In Tarantino’s 1997 classic, the great Pam Grier stars as Jackie, a flight attendant who smuggles money between the United States and Mexico for a gunrunner, which makes her the target of an ATF agent and L.A. cop, as well as the gunrunner’s confederates. She attempts to outsmart them all and walk away with all the money.
Kill Bill (Lionsgate): Another Tarantino modern classic starring Uma Thurman as the Bride, a woman who ran away from her gang and was then gunned down by them on her wedding. After waking up from a coma, she exacts bloody vengeance on them all.
April Fool’s Day (Kino): Fred Walton’s 1986 cult horror classic about a young woman inviting her college friends to her parents’ secluded island home, playing pranks in the process. However, someone isn’t playing any pranks, as they get picked off one by one.
