i watched the substance because it's been getting a lot of buzz and a lot of praise, and because i want to watch more horror movies anyways. it's like if "the picture of dorian grey" and "hannah montana" had a deeply toxic relationship and produced the most fundamentally twisted baby you've ever seen lol. it also feels like two separate movies to me, one really really good and one really really stupid, which i guess is fitting with the plot?

the visuals and overall 'vibes' are by far the strongest part of this movie, and they're super super strong. the horror aspect of this movie is just fantastic. it's awful and grody and grimy and it made me squirm. even when it wasn't freaking me out with painful sequences and gory prosthetics, it was really visually striking. the camera work is creative and they clearly wanted to make a fun film, which always always nets my respect. the substance was a lot of things but it was (almost) never boring, even though it's 2 and a half hours long. the substance is a good piece of body horror.

that being said, there is a reason that i only gave this one three stars. it was marketed as being a piece of witty satire, but i don't think it was particularly good satire, or even particularly witty. kind of the opposite. first off - this movie is about as subtle as a cinderblock to the face. the vendors of the substance are comically and obviously evil. the men in this movie are all turbo-misogynist in a way that's almost comically villainous. the main character's insecurity is quite literally plastered directly outside her window on a giant billboard. no one speaks like a real person. this aspect of the movie is for sure an intentional part of its style, but the violent murder of even a concept of subtext or audience interpretation took me out of the experience on multiple occasions. it's so unsubtle about what it's trying to satirize that i feel like it kept accidentally falling into being what it was criticizing.

but my biggest issue with this movie is the fact that it doesn't trust its viewer. this movie thinks its audience is too stupid to remember anything or put two and two together. there were multiple times in the movie where something from earlier was brought up again and made plot important - this is how movies work. to name a specific example, near the beginning, there's a handsome young doctor character who has a large birthmark on his hand. much later in the movie, an old man appears and starts haranguing main character elizabeth about her use of the substance. we see the same birthmark on his hand. in any other movie, this would be a point where the audience goes "ohh! he has the birthmark! it's the same guy, he's also using the substance!" except this movie never gives you the chance to make that connection. it shows us his birthmark. it shows us a flashback of the doctor. it shows us the doctor's birthmark again. elizabeth gasps and goes "it's you..." and it's a little bit annoying. things like this happen multiple times throughout the movie, because the substance doesn't trust itself to hold your attention enough for you to remember what they've set up. it's a shame, too, because i thought all of these moments could have been great -- if they had just restrained themselves from beating you over the head with flashbacks and title cards like "DO YOU GET IT? DO YOU GET IT YET? REMEMBER WHEN WE SET THIS UP?

the last 30 minutes made me roll my eyes and shake my head. they weren't believable, they weren't scary, and they didn't serve the narrative other than one kind of cool little visual parallel near the ending. i think something as small as a minor re-edit -- cutting out the obnoxious flashbacks and the final 20-30 minutes or so -- would have made for a better movie. but as critical as i've been of the story aspect, i do still want to stress that the horror aspect of this movie is really, really good, and i had a lot of fun outside of the aspects i didn't like. it's interesting and novel, it's freaky, it's grody as all hell, and the effects are really impressive. if you go in expecting an excellent story and piece of satire, you'll be disappointed -- but if you go in expecting a good horror flick to get freaked out to, you will have a fantastic time.