Hey, remember movie theaters? They’re great! I always try to make room for horror movies playing in theaters during the Six Weeks of Halloween, but releases are not always cooperative. What’s that? A hot director is remaking Nosferatu? Awesome, when does it come out? Christmas Day? Uh, ok. Um, what about that movie that’s, like, a slasher told from the perspective of Jason? No, that came out in April (but it is streaming on Shudder if you want to check it out).
Look, not everything has to come out around Halloween, but there are some years where the pickins are way, way too slim. Fortunately, this year is not one of them! There are actually plenty of options in the theaters right now, and I saw two of the more interesting, smaller-scale releases. One is getting a lot of play amongst the film dorks, the other is apparently way more obscure (and, admittedly, not very mainstream).
Six Weeks of Halloween: Week 2.5 – Now Playing: The Substance & Azrael
- The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror VIII: Fly Vs. Fly
- Society (trailer)
- Meatballs (SNL)
The Substance – Meet Elisabeth Sparkle! An Oscar winning actress who has aged out of big roles into a lesser, Jane Fonda-esque TV workout show. Even this more limited fame becomes jeopardized when the producer fires her, basically because she’s too old. Enter The Substance, a new, invite-only, black market cell-replicating drug that promises to temporarily create a younger, better version of herself. FDA approval is presumably pending.
A primal scream about Hollywood’s tendency to chew up youth and dehumanize aging stars (particularly among women), this movie has seemingly struck a chord with audiences. The premise is vaguely explained and a little sloppy, but thematically rich. On its surface, it’s actually quite blunt and not very insightful, but if you dig deeper, there’s lots to explore around addiction and self-destructive hedonism and empowerment. The things we think we want are slowly destroying us.
The casting of Demi Moore is perfectly suited to this story. As someone who built a career on her radiant beauty and became an A-list star, but who has seen diminishing opportunity as she aged, Moore basically is this character and her self-aware performance is fantastic. It’s the sort of role that people will call “brave,” which normally just translates to the fact that it requires a lot of nudity, but here involves a level self-reflection that must have been uncomfortable. Margaret Qualley might not be the obvious choice for the younger, better version of Moore, but also does exceptional work (apparently with the aid of some prosthetics). I think both would be deserving of awards season consideration… but I can’t imagine Academy Awards voters really connecting with the more lurid body horror elements of this story (more on this in a bit).
Dennis Quaid shows up in a small role as your typical scummy Hollywood producer (his character’s name is Harvey, providing a useful shorthand for those who don’t immediately get it). It’s a big, unsubtle performance (also brave, in its own way) that is accentuated by garish wardrobe choices and even filmmaking choices like fisheye lenses and foley work. A scene in which Quaid’s character eats shrimp is emphasized so dramatically by the closeups and sound design that it might single-handedly set off an epidemic of misophonia. Seriously, this film has lots of gross-out body horror sequences, but this particular scene is so viscerally disgusting that it more than stands up to the effects-heavy gore later in the film (which, to be sure, also features alarmingly well done sound design and makeup.)
Director Coralie Fargeat is building on her work in Revenge here in an interesting way. Both films benefit from her feminine perspective in a way that would probably not be possible with a male director. I suspect the way the camera lingers on Moore and Qualley’s bodies would draw very different responses if they came from male director. This movie might drive the Gen-Z anti-sex scolds a little crazy, but there’s lots of thought-provoking depth in this film if you’re willing to confront it.
Much has been made of this movie’s Body Horror (that gnarly sub-genre that explores the grotesque violations and general frailty of the human body), and as the side effects of misusing the titular Substance become clear and escalate throughout the film, we are treated to some truly nauseating gore. This is clearly not a movie for the faint of heart, as there are several virtuosic sequences that are genuinely unnerving and gross. Near as I can tell, they leaned heavily into practical effects and makeup here, rather than excessive CGI, and that just provides a sorta texture that makes the whole experience even more disconcerting. It’s important to note that these sequences aren’t entirely gratuitous either; they are used to emphasize the results of our protagonist’s addiction to youthful fame and the self-destructive consequences of desperately trying to cling to it by any means necessary (alright, maybe a little gratuitous, but still, there’s a point to it).
As a general rule, you can’t really talk about Body Horror in film without mentioning David Cronenberg, and his influence is definitely felt here, but I was also reminded of Brian Yuzna’s particular brand of Body Horror (notably in the film Society) and Frank Henenlotter might also be worth thinking about. Indeed, this film seems filled with tributes and homages, without actually feeling too derivative of any one source or too on-the-nose about it. Even influences as far afield as The Picture of Dorian Gray, Requiem for a Dream, and Nothing But Trouble get some love.
The intensity of the body horror can get a bit overwhelming, especially for a movie that is this long. There are some pacing issues, and Fargeat was seemingly terrified that people wouldn’t get the connections she was trying to make, and so she adds all sorts of flashbacks to scenes that just happened ten minutes ago. I get the impulse to do this sort of thing because, as mentioned earlier, the actual rules about how the Substance works and what is actually happening are a little cryptic (despite the Jony Ive-style concise packaging design for the Substance kits), but on the other hand, this is clearly going for a sorta demented fairy-tale vibe that doesn’t actually need every detail spelled out (to be sure, my dumb engineer’s brain has tons of questions about how this stuff works, what the relationship actually is between the doubles, and so on, but I’m able to go with it because the movie offers lots of other things.) As a result of this approach, some of the payoffs are undercut by repetitiveness, and it messes with the pacing. Paradoxically, some of what this movie so desperately wants to say (to scream) gets muddled as well. There’s probably a tighter, 100-120 minute version of this that would not feel as bloated.
That being said, it’s hard to fault a movie for being this ambitious and still largely successful at evoking a thoughtful response. I honestly didn’t think this review would grow to the length that it has (and I could probably make it even longer), which I think says something important. Indeed, I suspect a lot of the most interesting things about this movie are the ideas we bring to it ourselves, not so much the thuddingly obvious ideas it clearly wants to bash us in the face with. It’s one of those movies where the criticisms probably say more about the critic than the movie itself (I’m too tired to re-edit this post with this in mind, please be kind to me). There are plenty of quibbles to be had, but I was quite happy to see something this deranged in a theater with a bunch of people (the last half hour or so, in particular, are great to watch with a crowd of stunned onlookers). ***
- Stake Land (trailer)
- Kool Aid in Zombie Wasteland (Robot Chicken)
- The Signal (trailer)
Azrael – Many years after the Rapture, a young woman named Azrael is being hunted by a group of devout believers who want to sacrifice her in order to pacify an ancient evil that lives in the surrounding wilderness.
At least, I think that’s what’s happening. Due to whatever weird perversion of religion is happening in this post-Rapture world, the grand majority of characters have been surgically muted (in order to “renounce the sin of speech” as the film’s textual prologue informs us), so there is basically no dialogue here. Everything we learn about what is going on is done visually. This makes for a somewhat thin story of survival, but it’s at least action packed and visceral. With a runtime of 86 minutes, it never really wears out its welcome and it ends on a high note, with a diabolical and perfectly composed shot.
Samara Weaving plays Azrael and does excellent work, continuing a string of blood soaked performances that have earned her a devoted following. Due to the mute nature of the character, she’s forced to leverage her facial expressions and physicality more than you’d normally expect, and she’s up to the task. Other performances are similarly calibrated, and the characters are distinct enough that you can distinguish between them. The ancient evil in the forest is mostly played as a monstrous cipher. The movie effectively communicates that they’re attracted by the smell of blood, but the mechanics of when and how they attack (and why they would spare some people and not others) are left unclear. The creature design is perfectly cromulent, basically just burned/singed, slightly out of proportion humans, decent but not memorable enough to become iconic or anything like that.
The lack of dialog is bound to turn some people off and the simplicity of the narrative coupled with a stubborn refusal to elaborate on certain oddities probably won’t help, but I was really taken with this movie. It hasn’t been getting much traction, even amongst the mutant horror sub-cultures on Twitter or Letterboxd (where something like The Substance is gaining tons of attention). It’s clearly lower budget and has less star power, not to mention no discernable marketing, which probably explains some of it, but it’s worth seeking out if you like this sort of thing. It’s simplistic and probably won’t satisfy the “elevated horror” folks in the way that The Substance would, but I thought it was great. ***
Both of these are well worth seeking out if you like out of the ordinary horror stuff (and if you have a strong stomach) and will hopefully remain in theaters for a couple more weeks. Happy hunting. In the meantime, we’ve got a few Larry Fessenden movies coming on Sunday, so stay tuned…
I’m really hoping to catch up with The Substance before October is over. Azrael sounds cool, read a little about it but didn’t know it was short on dialogue. Innnnnteresting.