[Note: Contains Spoilers]

Pitch Meeting:

Director: Intellectual horror is hot (see Ari Aster). So are movies about older women (Babygirl, et al.). And Faustian bargains are always good (See Eggers’ The Witch, and no one is cooler than Eggers now).

Producer: So what do you have in mind?

Director: Think “Faust meets The Elephant Man meets Alien meets Carrie.”

Producer: Go on.

Director: Add in a feminist message about Hollywood’s treatment of actresses over 50.

Producer: Put it all together.

Director: Get a middle-aged actress (Demi or Sigourney would be perfect) getting shafted because of her age. She makes a pact with the devil (in the form of a mysterious pharmaceutical company) to create a younger self (think Margaret Qualley or Anya Taylor-Joy). The catch – the younger and older selves must alternate every seven days. Messing with this results in an orgy of grotesque aging and blood spattering violence,

Producer: I like it. Missing one thing though.

Director: Almost forgot: Nudity. Both the older and younger versions.

Producer: Perfect. Green light!

This film opens strong, with a time lapse sequence beginning with installation of a Hollywood Walk of Fame Star for Elizabeth Sparkle(Demi Moore), and its erosion over years. (Best comment on the Hollywood Stars since The Kinks’ Celluloid Heroes.) We then see the real life erosion when she is ditched because of her age from her job as lead on an aerobics TV Show. A grotesquely over-the-top Dennis Quaid wearing ludicrous suits gives her the bad news. She learns about the titular “Substance” through an unnecessarily complicated plot device: A car accident in which she is only mildly injured but meets a (so far) satisfied Substance customer. There are countless other ways she could have had the introduction.

The film is beautifully shot, using techniques like framing characters in various portals in a distance shot -- used so effectively in Eggers’ Nosferatu. Elisabeth is almost always wearing a bright yellow coat, making her stand out from everything else.

After agonizing about it for a while, she connects with the mysterious Substance location and, wearing her omnipresent (and now iconic) yellow coat, ducks under a decrepit, half open roll-up door (I kept thinking about the 7 1/2th floor in Being John Malkovich) to get her youth kit. There are two main rules: Alternate the older and younger self every seven days and never forget “You are one” with your other self.

After the strong beginning, the film slows down, as Elisabeth morphs into her younger version, Sue (Margaret Qualley), emerging from Elisabeth’s body like the monster in Alien. The seven days switch is not an easy process, involving multiple injections and stitching. Predictably, Sue becomes a megastar but violates both Substance rules by overstaying the week and separating herself from Elisabeth. Also predictably, this violation of the Faustian bargain leads to disaster, as Elisabeth quickly ages – first just a finger and then a rapid descent into cronehood. In a cringeworthy but effective scene, Elisabeth cannot bring herself to go on a date after repeatedly failing to make herself up to look more like Sue.

Along the way, as herself, Elisabeth meets a decrepit old man at a diner, who turns out to be the young Substance customer who initially referred her to the process. But it’s not clear whether he aged by violating the rules, whether the aging of the older self happens inevitably even if your follow the rules, or whether it’s inevitable in all cases that the younger self will want to overstay the seven days.

Aging irrevocably, Elisabeth turns into an old woman and terminates the process, leaving both of them alive at the same time. Furious, Sue kills Elisabeth, but quickly becomes the “Elephant Woman,” her hideous appearance based on the deformed Joseph Merrick in the David Lynch film. The climax is an orgy of blood spattering, very reminiscent of the gory end of Carrie, and a nice full circle return to the Walk of Fame Star.

The film’s goal is to comment on the way show business discards older women, and some womens’ desperation to cling to youth through plastic surgery or otherwise. It succeeds, but in a heavy-handed and derivative way. Sunset Boulevard it is not.