The Substance (2024, Fargeat)
A who’s who of extreme cinema lions hiding in the shadows here: Noe, Cronenberg, Lynch, Easton Ellis/Harron, Von Trier, Argento, and I’m sure I’m neglecting a few more. This shouldn’t work; it’s never worked for me before: arthouse horror sucks. But Fargeat snuck a wolf of a normal fucking genre movie into something with art house sheep’s clothing. This is exactly what I expected, and no praise can be higher: set up a premise, play with it, bring it full circle in a satisfying way. It’s functional, which is crazy to say is refreshing in 2024. The Jungian Double, an outrageously hilarious take on body image (its sheen makes it feel like a movie you’d see in the world of GTA V), and a surprisingly earnest take on the horror of aging and the accompanying anger: Date Night, I’ll call it, was my favorite scene--funny, cutting, and deeply empathic. And when’s the last time we got a good original sci-fi movie? Not the mean-spirited shockfest I expected—on the contrary, this has heart to spare. I loved it.
