Frequently annoying, frequently funny, and way too long at 2 hours 40 minutes, marbled from condescending redundancies, The Substance is a slab of meat in desperate need of trimming.
Deep behind all of its needlessly ornate botox is a fun but insecure exploitation movie (unlike the Chad Malignant). Thankfully, the ending is where the filler finally bursts and we're shoved into 30 absurd, blood-drenched minutes of slimy phantasmagoria (with fantastic make-up and gore effects). But what it looks like in the mirror is much less desirable: a vapid, self-hating metaphorror movie with empty platitudes about body-image issues and dreams of prestige. Even worse is how it constantly explains itself even though it's already insufferably unsubtle. Met with Oscar nominations and hyperbolic raves that seemed to stack on top of one another, this thing would not die.
What really irked me was seeing "Cronenberg" name-plopped around the discourse, not unlike seeing splotches of bird shit at the park (one might say Pollockian). It's not even a direct comparison to his work but more of a lazy, uninformed wielding of his name as a buzzword. But anyone who uses his name like that is telling on themselves: clearly they don't engage with his newest works (and they've also never seen any Yuzna or Henenlotter). Calling something 'Cronenbergian' has taken on new meaning as he's operating in a different mode altogether now; [rhetorically] what era are they referring to? To them he's still the bODy hoRrOr director from the '70s and '80s and if he's not doing anything in that realm then he's not worth a shit. Which, I guess, in that way his name would be synonymous with The Substance: those who are stuck in the past dismiss his new works as disposable now that he's wrinkled by time. They've flattened him into a brand, no longer an evolving artist.
He explicitly stated in an interview that he's not into the Body Horror label. Hell, even before that interview it was evident: the Ear Man, who's all over the marketing for Crimes Of The Future, is referred to in the movie simply as "escapist propaganda." Sure, the body is still a major focus and texture in his work, but for more thoughtful pursuits than shock or ick. It's the other half— Horror—that he's abandoned completely. Crimes Of The Future is sci-fi noir and The Shrouds is a coming-of-old-age drama. I've already written about Crimes Of The Future and my feelings haven't changed beyond finding more appreciation for the same things.
Written after his Wife died from cancer (after taking time away to care for her) The Shrouds is Late Cronenberg at his most absurd and sincere. Our protagonist, Karsh, isn't a one-to-one avatar for Cronenberg but Vincent Cassel definitely looks the part; some shots he's pretty much identical to Cronenberg.
So in scenes where he dreams about talking to his Wife and reliving painful moments of her body deteriorating from cancer...it certainly feels autobiographical. These moments are so earnest while also incredibly tense because her body is so brittle that any contact risks harm. Thus he becomes convinced that the Doctors are not only not helping her get better but are working to make things worse.
From that framework he treats grief as more than just a limp metaphor manifested in some monster or possession, rather in literal terms of uncertainty, resentment, insecurity, longing, obsession, paranoia, denial, and stupidity. For a movie made by someone recovering from loss, it's pretty funny and playful about how desperate we are.
So much of this is genuinely profound and fucking dumb; the very idea of a 'digital graveyard' and an open casket app (or how Cronenberg points out the Crypt in Crypto, among other puns) is so galaxy-brained that it loops back around to being fantastically moronic. It's also forward-thinking considering Cronenberg is nearing his 80s and he's so curious about modernity, still blessed with an active imagination — as opposed to his contemporaries who are stuck in the past. I'm even impressed by little idiosyncratic details he thinks to include. There's a bit where a blind woman's text-to-speech reads things out imperceptibly fast so she has to slow it down for the normies who can't hear as quickly. Or how she has to feel people's faces to 'see' them, just like how we use the haptic tech to interact with our touch-screens. The visual ethos of this is in shots of screens which, for us, means screens within a screen.
"I'm often watching movies to see dead people. I want to see them again, hear them. In a way cinema is a cemetery."
Cronenberg
The closest it gets to horror/thriller is in an A.I. avatar, fittingly enough. Her name is Honey and holy fuck is every scene with her fucking tense. She's so plucky and flirty and cunning. And I don't mean cunning in the sense that she's sly or anything, she's not. It's almost creepier that she's not aware of how bad she is at hiding her—I just realized I've been saying 'Her' when It very much is not human. I digress. Uhh, oh yeah: It's not aware of how bad it is at hiding its ulterior motives*, especially when it impersonates a horny Koala bear.
Honey is voiced and mo'-cap'd by Diane Kruger, pulling triple duty as Karsh's wife and her twin sister. She makes every iteration of her distinct, particularly her pained existence in Karsh's dreams. Interestingly, the only time we see his wife's body outside of hazy dreams of memories is in digital recreations. Her twin is the only corporeal approximation we have of her. But, again, that isn't really Her. Karsh is asked if he wants to see her actual body and he silently refuses. Meanwhile he goes out of his way to look at her pixels on his screen. There's a sickening scene of Karsh hallucinating Honey transforming into a mangled version of Karsh's dead wife as she It dances around pantomiming masturbation. Shit made the hairs on my neck stand up and induced a fever.
Save for that scene, there isn't much in the way of a 'thriller,' despite a mounting conspiracy. I'll go ahead and say now, at the risk of spoiling the experience: there is no conspiracy. Or, there is, but that fuse gets snipped before it explodes. Cronenberg is more interested why we cozy up to conspiracy theories rather than giving us an actually satisfying thread to knot. What's more distracting from your grief than a mystery to solve? Because, after all, if you find catharsis—any catharsis—then you can move on.
Right?
Anyway, have you seen The Substance?
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