The Substance: My 2024 WTF Movie

It’s been a while since I first ranted about The Substance, but with all the buzz around “My 2024 WTF Cinema Moment” on Peliplat, I couldn’t resist the urge to grab the mic again.

There are countless ways to tell a story about a woman and her two selves—they could team up to overthrow the toxic entertainment industry, or they could reconcile and heal each other. Hell, they could even go the way of Thelma & Louise (1991) and torch everything in their wake. But no, The Substance picks the absolute worst option: having them tear each other apart while turning their bodies into grotesque spectacles for all to ogle.

Let’s start with the obvious: The Substance is a body horror film through and through—decaying flesh, grotesquely mutated organs, squishy surgery scenes—all splattered across the screen in unrelenting detail. I’ve watched my share of gory horror and thought I had the stomach for it, but The Substance pushed me to my limit. I sat there clutching my armrest, trying to hold down my lunch (a chicken burger, which, in hindsight, was a poor choice of pre-film snack).

The gore itself isn’t the problem. The real issue is that these shocking visuals feel hollow; they seem to be screaming, “Look how daring we are!” without offering anything of substance. The spectacle dominates so completely that any deeper thematic exploration is buried under layers of gooey flesh and splattered blood.

Here’s where things truly make me shout WTF: the film claims to critique the male gaze but is in fact drowning in it. The camera lingers intensely on Margaret Qualley’s body that would make even the most exploitative directors blush. Shot after shot zooms in on her curves—her backside gets even more screen time than her dialogue.

The film wants us to believe this is satire, a clever “gotcha” aimed at the male-dominated industry. But come on—how is saturating the screen with male-gazey shots any different from pandering to that very gaze? It’s like claiming you’re protesting pollution by dumping oil into the ocean or robbing a bank to protest theft. The director has essentially created a self-defeating paradox: using exploitation itself to critique exploitation.

The result is frustratingly hypocritical. Instead of deconstructing the gaze, the film indulges in it, and only attempts to to wag its finger at it afterward. If the goal was to punish the gazer, turning the protagonist into a monstrous spectacle doesn’t do the job—it just reinforces the act. Instead of empowering the victim, it doubles down on her suffering for the audience's (onscreen and off) enjoyment.

Watching The Substance, I was reminded of how tough it is for female directors to create feminist cinema within the male-dominated industry. The shadow of patriarchal narratives looms so large that even attempts to subvert them can end up reinforcing the same oppressive tropes. Breaking away from old, oppressive narratives feels almost impossible, but using the same language of violence and objectification only perpetuates the problem.

That said, there was one scene that briefly makes up for its flaws. Elizabeth (played by Demi Moore), preparing for a date with her admirer Fred, repeatedly applies and removes her makeup, agonizing over her reflection in the mirror. She never makes it out the door. In this quiet, vulnerable moment, the film captures the suffocating self-loathing that so many women experience under the weight of impossible beauty standards—how they internalize the gaze, transform it into relentless self-criticism, and ultimately retreat from the world to escape judgment.

It’s a painful moment—one that resonates far more deeply than any of the film’s grotesque spectacles. If the filmmakers had built the film on the basis of this raw emotional core, they might have created something truly meaningful.

Ultimately, The Substance feels like yet another entry in the tiring genre of “female suffering as spectacle.” How many times have we seen stories of women sacrificing themselves for unattainable ideals, only to meet tragic ends? These narratives claim to be feminist but often veer into thinly veiled misogyny. More often than not, they claim to critique oppressive systems but end up merely depicting oppression once again without offering alternatives, resulting a kind of nihilistic loop: women suffer, men benefit, the end.

I’m not asking for sugarcoated optimism like Barbie (2023). But can we please stop leaning to either extremes? I’m tired of watching female characters be torn apart—literally or figuratively—while the industry pats itself on the back for being “bold.” I want to see stories that challenge old tropes without reinforcing them, that acknowledge pain without glamorizing it, and that offer more than just blood-soaked nihilism.

Until the vision is in horizental, The Substance will remain my WTF Movie. It is provocative, sure, but in all the wrong ways.