The Substance
MUBI | Release Date: September 20, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
78
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 57 Critic Reviews
Positive:
49
Mixed:
6
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
St. Louis Post-DispatchKatie WalshOct 1, 2024
Fargeat delivers a macabre, funny, tragic, absurd and grotesque Grand Guignol of butts and guts; a bonkers and brutal “beauty horror” that elevates the genre to a hysterically unprecedented heights. Read full review
100
NMENick LevineSep 19, 2024
It’s horrifying in the moment and gnawingly haunting when you process it fully: a sickening satire of society’s obsession with youth and beauty. Read full review
100
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeSep 18, 2024
All kinds of comparisons present themselves during Coralie Fargeat’s monstrous growl at the inhumanity of society’s response to the ageing process. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleSep 16, 2024
The Substance gets more wonderfully appalling as it goes along, but it’s impressive from its first moments, and it never lets up. Read full review
100
Screen RantPatrice WitherspoonMay 30, 2024
While dissecting the world’s ridiculous beauty ideals, Fargeat directs her sensational feat with pungent audacity, fearless humor, and dysmorphic body horror. Read full review
100
The Irish TimesTara BradyMay 30, 2024
Director Coralie Fargeat follows up her gory 2017 rape-reprisal thriller, Revenge, with this outrageous comic body-horror, pitched somewhere between Sunset Boulevard and Brian Yuzna’s cult classic, Society. Read full review
100
Time OutPhil de SemlyenMay 20, 2024
The tone is incredibly specific – darkly funny, exuberant, sad and enraged – and the small cast nails it. Read full review
100
The TelegraphTim RobeyMay 19, 2024
It’s the casting of Moore, though, and her willingness to denude herself at 61 – emotionally, as well as physically – that gives The Substance a startling connection with its themes. Not for 30 years has she owned a film with anything like this certitude. Watching her confront the Demi Moore in the mirror, and do it so mercilessly, is extraordinary. Read full review
91
The PlaylistGregory EllwoodMay 20, 2024
A bold dissection on aging and self-hatred Fargeat’s latest work is an utter visual marvel and features superb performances from its lead actresses; Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. Read full review
91
IndieWireDavid EhrlichMay 19, 2024
An immensely, unstoppably, ecstatically demented fairy tale about female self-hatred, Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance will stop at nothing — and I mean nothing — to explode the ruthless beauty standards that society has inflicted upon women for thousands of years. Read full review
90
Film ThreatBobby LePireSep 25, 2024
The Substance is flawed but only because it is so ambitious. Fargaet takes the entertainment industry down a peg while still being very entertaining. Read full review
90
The New York TimesAlissa WilkinsonSep 19, 2024
The sharpest critique isn’t about bodies, but about the way we’ve trained ourselves to look at those bodies, and the effect that has on our own. The movie is, appropriately enough, a mirror, and our discomfort reveals our own hidden biases and fears about ourselves. Read full review
90
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Sarah-Tai BlackSep 19, 2024
While its celebration of all things fleshly, protrusive, and gloriously ectoplasmic may not be for those viewers too faint of heart, Fargeat’s no-holds-barred, wholly beyond your wildest expectations approach with The Substance will leave genre fans kicking their feet up in glee. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzSep 18, 2024
It’s only Fargeat’s second feature after 2017’s “Revenge.” That was a good movie. “The Substance” is a substantial leap forward and a film people will rightfully be talking about for a while. Read full review
90
SlashfilmChris EvangelistaSep 17, 2024
The Substance has an impossible-to-miss message about the struggles of women, especially women on constant display in an industry that thrives on rigid beauty standards. But it's also a delightfully farcical romp; an exhilarating, shocking freak show with an absurdist heart. It's the type of movie you won't forget. Read full review
90
We Got This CoveredMateusz MiterAug 1, 2024
While horrifying on the outside, Fargeat’s latest hit tells a heartbreaking story on the inside. For that, it’s a must-see this year. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerSep 19, 2024
Revenge proved that Fargeat can combine astonishing, lurid, hyperpsychosexualized visuals with incisive social commentary. Yet there’s a vibrant audaciousness to The Substance that’s matched and complemented by her cool examination of the cost of youth and beauty. She can swing between cerebral drama and body horror, but this is definitely not a Cronenberg knockoff. Read full review
88
The Associated PressKrysta FauriaSep 20, 2024
If there’s a critique to be made about the film, it’s that the satire and caricatures are a bit heavy-handed, with most of the male characters being not-so-subtle misogynists. But that overkill is part of what makes it so much fun. Read full review
88
ABC NewsPeter TraversSep 20, 2024
Demi Moore seizes the role of her lifetime as a movie star turned fitness guru who gets axed for committing the cardinal sin of aging. You’ve never seen anything like the body horrors in Coralie Fargeat’s gory and glorious takedown of youth obsession. Read full review
88
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiSep 6, 2024
I enjoyed this ride of titillation, torment, insanity and exploitation to such a preposterous extent that I’ve considered signing up for online therapy to wrestle with it. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comMonica CastilloSep 6, 2024
The Substance works as well as it does because of Moore’s unbridled performance as a woman struggling with self-hatred, society’s treatment of her, and a newfound dependency on a miracle drug. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineChuck BowenJul 2, 2024
The humanity of Demi Moore’s performance, the greatest of her career, gives Coralie Fargeat’s boldest ideas an emotional backbeat. Read full review
85
The Daily BeastNick SchagerSep 20, 2024
Pushes everything past the point of moderation and decency until it becomes a riotous discourse on the personal and cultural forces that drive women to madness in search of physical perfection. Read full review
83
Original-CinLiz BraunSep 18, 2024
Writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s comedy is an inspired send-up of the contemporary emphasis on youth and beauty. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubKatie RifeSep 10, 2024
It’s animated by a white-hot rage that escalates throughout its epic 140-minute run time, building to a jaw-droppingly audacious climax that sprays a firehose of blood at the audience. It’s demented and absurd in the best way possible. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyMaureen Lee LenkerSep 8, 2024
While it is so over-the-top as to verge on camp, it is also a chillingly pointed expression of the madness that ensues in pursuit of impossible standards — and the self-loathing and hatred that emerges when women are pitted against each other and themselves. Read full review
83
The Film StageLuke HicksMay 23, 2024
The aspirations are admirable, but at 140 minutes it’s overlong, arriving at a pretty natural end before another act begins and we launch into what suggests an unwarranted second film. (Still, one that also ends up being good.) Read full review
80
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeOct 1, 2024
The Substance not only offers a female perspective on women’s bodies, but also argues that things only start to get properly messy once fertility is a dim memory. Read full review
80
The New YorkerJustin ChangSep 19, 2024
Fargeat’s movie can be called many things: a body-horror buffet, a feminist cri de coeur, an evisceration of the sunny, surface-obsessed Los Angeles where it unfolds. It’s also a movie of process, deliberately paced, exactingly observed, and no less gripping for its sometimes gruelling repetitions. Read full review
80
iChristina NewlandSep 19, 2024
The plot isn’t always watertight, but The Substance nails the way female youth and beauty can steam-roll and flatten out the existence of older women. Read full review
80
Rolling StoneDavid FearSep 18, 2024
The Substance won’t reset society’s fixation on youth or cure Hollywood’s sexist ills. It will, however, remind you that when you’re chasing your past by any means necessary, you are always your own worst enemy. Read full review
80
EmpireLaura VenningSep 16, 2024
Feminist scholarship this ain’t; think Showgirls if it were directed by David Cronenberg. But give yourself permission to revel in the excess and be rewarded with an uproariously good time. Read full review
80
The Daily BeastEsther ZuckermanMay 27, 2024
The horror is so creative and over the top, you don’t mind the lack of world building. Read full review
80
IGNLex BriscusoMay 25, 2024
Sure, it’s an exaggerated and somewhat obvious film, but that doesn’t make director Coralie Fargeat’s point any less true – nor does it detract from the tremendously gory way in which she makes it. Read full review
80
Total FilmJames MottramMay 20, 2024
This is an assured, blackly funny, and outrageous horror that will leave you roaring with approval. Read full review
80
BBCNicholas BarberMay 19, 2024
For some viewers, this frenzied finale will be reason enough to treasure The Substance; for others, it will be reason enough to steer well clear. But no one who sees Fargeat's film will forget it. If she had taken it to its magnificently tasteless extreme 15 or 20 minutes sooner, it would have been a cult classic. Read full review
80
Screen DailyTim GriersonMay 19, 2024
This potent body horror is executed with skill and compassion, bringing fresh insights alongside generous helpings of graphic gore. Read full review
80
VarietyOwen GleibermanMay 19, 2024
The Substance is the work of a filmmaker with a vision. She’s got something primal to say to us. Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 19, 2024
In its trashiness – and, yes, its refusal of serious substance – The Substance should really be put out on VHS cassettes and watched at home in homage to the great era of home entertainment pulp and video-store masterpieces of weirdness and crassness. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliSep 20, 2024
This is off-the-beaten-path movie-making that calls attention to itself by how different it is from the cookie-cutter stuff playing next door while never losing the capacity to entertain those who enter this bizarre world. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 20, 2024
Moore’s performance is unfiltered and fierce, manic at times, a tour de force turn and maybe even her career best. Read full review
75
Washington PostTy BurrSep 19, 2024
With wit, style and ruthlessness, Fargeat has made a movie that’s an example of the soulless pop-culture object she’s spoofing. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonSep 17, 2024
Had it been 90 minutes, we might be talking about a classic here. If there’s anything that was in dire need of a shot of The Substance to bring out a leaner, tighter version of itself, it’s this film’s Cannes-award-winning screenplay. Read full review
75
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenSep 17, 2024
It’s a lot, and only becomes more so, but something about the movie’s central idea—as well as the black streak of humor Fargeat brings to the proceedings—kept me hooked. Read full review
75
ConsequenceLiz Shannon MillerSep 17, 2024
Ultimately, The Substance isn’t saying anything new, but the extremes to which it’s willing to go make it unforgettable cinema. Read full review
70
ColliderCaleb HammondMay 21, 2024
Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance is a film whose style might get in the way of the substance, but it still ensures the filmmaker will have a legion of new horror fans waiting for what she does next. Read full review
70
TimeStephanie ZacharekMay 21, 2024
The Substance is distinctive less for its nutso, over-the-top gore than for a single scene midway through the film that exposes a different kind of body horror—or, more specifically, the way insecurity can be its own kind of horror. Read full review
70
Vanity FairRichard LawsonMay 21, 2024
There are too many endings here, as if Fargeat had several great ideas for final images but couldn’t decide on one. So they’re all thrown in, one after the other, as the film wears out its well-earned welcome. Moore and Qualley keep selling it, though. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterLovia GyarkyeMay 19, 2024
The most compelling parts of The Substance deal with how social conventions turn women against themselves. A stronger version of the film might have dug into the complexities of that truth, instead of simply arranging itself around it. Read full review
60
Los Angeles TimesAmy NicholsonSep 19, 2024
If it weren’t for Moore and Qualley hurling themselves into the shared role, it’d be as flat as a scotch-taped pin-up. If it weren’t for Moore, I’m not even sure it would work. Read full review
60
The IndependentClarisse LoughreySep 19, 2024
The Substance doesn’t quite gel as it should, but it’s potent. Read full review
50
Wall Street JournalZachary BarnesSep 19, 2024
The result is impressively if overbearingly grotesque, boasting an ecstatic surface of blood, guts and deformities. But it’s all in service of obvious ideas about the intertwined pressures of sexism and the spotlight, themes too little developed to sustain the nightmarish, queasily satirical fantasia splashed and spattered atop them. Read full review
50
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsSep 19, 2024
[Moore's] gripping in ways the rest of the picture is not, transcending the thesis points and comic exaggerations simply by playing against the comic extremes and holding a card or two, always, in reserve. She reminds us here how good, and tough, she is at her best, when she gets half a chance. Read full review
50
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperSep 17, 2024
The satire becomes almost numbingly obvious over the far too long running time of 140 minutes, and with all due appreciation for the strong work by the leads, the horrifically impressive VFX and prosthetics, and a few moments of pitch-black humor, we exit the film feeling more pummeled than enlightened. Read full review
40
Little White LiesHannah StrongSep 17, 2024
The Substance’s presentation is as shallow as the very thing it’s critiquing. There’s no compassion, and certainly no catharsis – just more hagsploitation and a sense of déjà vu. Read full review
30
Paste MagazineKatarina DocalovichSep 18, 2024
An overuse of stale horror conventions in an already predictable plot—combined with decades-old, thoroughly unchallenging ideas about women’s relationships to their bodies—leads to a film that claims to support its protagonist, while treating her like the butt of the joke at every turn. Read full review
20
SlateDana StevensSep 18, 2024
After two hours and 20 minutes of flamboyantly repulsive variations on this well-worn theme, even the strongest-stomached and most feminist of viewers could be excused for muttering, We get it already. Read full review
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