The Substance
Khoi Vinh

Review by Khoi Vinh Patron

The Substance 2024

★★½

Watched 20 Sep 2024

This parable for the dangers of prizing youth roughly works as a contemporary take on “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” and comprises at least two kinds of movies. The first is a highly stylized, music video-like immersion in absurdity; “Brazil” comes to mind. This part of the movie is insanely didactic and really, really boring. The second facet of note here is an extended indulgence in body horror, of which I am not an expert so the only comment I can really offer here is that it goes on for a long, long time, as if director Coralie Fargeat is determined to rub the audience’s faces in the grotesquerie of our collective ideals of female beauty. Does it go on too long? Probably. But again, if there’s a legit intellectual argument to be made for the value of just grossing the hell out of people, I’m not the one to make it. For what it’s worth, the vulgarity of Fargeat’s movie is far more interesting than the stylish set up that precedes it. I just wouldn’t want to watch any of this again. 

Saw it at Nitehawk Park Slope. People complain about how annoying it can be to have waiters at dine-in theaters blocking your view but I never really felt that as much as I did at this theater.

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