I have to say, I love Letterboxd. Along with Spotify, it’s my pride and joy — something that I look forward to impressing other cinephiles with. It’s also the app I consistently turn to for browsing others’ watchlists and checking out new movies.
I vividly remember when I first heard about “The Substance,” a film about an aging aerobics star coming to terms with Hollywood’s beauty standards. While browsing Letterboxd, I came across an image of Margaret Qualley in a neon pink leotard with a high slicked-back ponytail.
Letterboxd users raved about the film in countless satirical reviews, calling it “Barbie for people who listen to Charli XCX.”
“Girl you injected mountain dew straight into your bloodstream, what did you expect to happen,” another review commented.
“Oh, this movie seems fun,” I thought to myself.
It was not. Letterboxd tricked me. Instead, I found myself watching two hours of body horror, sensory overload and plenty of gore to go around.
But, I loved it.
On her 50th birthday, aerobics star Elisabeth Sparkle is abruptly fired from her job. In the midst of this turmoil, a lab offers Elisabeth a substance that promises to transform her into a better version of herself. Chaos ensues.
She injects herself with a syringe of mysterious green liquid and a younger, enhanced second body, “Sue,” sprouts from her back to take over the aerobics show. The Substance instructs Elisabeth to alternate her consciousness between the two bodies every seven days. However, as time goes on, the two bodies start to clash for more control, and Elisabeth’s original body begins to deteriorate as Sue disrupts the balance.
“The Substance” initially reminded me of movies like “Perfect Blue,” “Black Swan” and “Helter Skelter,” which tackles similar issues around industry pressure. While each of these films had its own mind-fuck hallucinogenic feel, “The Substance” takes it a step further by placing the audience under direct sensory assault with close-ups of shrimp being eaten, spines opening and blood spurting.
With its surreal approach, the movie managed to be both hilariously absurd and deeply unsettling.
The body horror in “The Substance” serves as a visceral metaphor for the relentless dissection of women’s appearances and the lengths to which we alter ourselves to meet societal standards. By displaying physical mutilation and grotesque transformation, the film confronts the painful, often violent ways women are pushed to reshape, refine and even destroy parts of themselves in the pursuit of beauty and acceptance. Through exaggerated, graphic imagery, “The Substance” forces us to confront how normalized and accepted these extremes have become.
“Yet, the film’s use of body horror seems to have a dual nature.”
Why does such mutilation remain a familiar, if uncomfortable, part of our cultural landscape?
Yet, the film’s use of body horror seems to have a dual nature.
Although it aims to critique beauty standards, “The Substance’s” on-screen torture of women also risks undermining its feminist intentions. Graphic depictions of women suffering or being mutilated, even for symbolic purposes, can reinforce harmful tropes rather than challenge them. This imagery mirrors a cultural fascination with female pain, presenting the suffering of women as a spectacle rather than as a call for empathy or critique.
Instead of empowering women by exposing societal pressures, the excessive focus on their pain can reduce women to mere objects of suffering, ultimately failing to provide a space for agency or resilience. This paradox highlights the delicate line between critiquing misogynistic standards and inadvertently perpetuating them through sensationalized or exploitative portrayals of female suffering.
Ultimately, this tension drives us to question how far we can push the boundaries of genre and symbolism without reinforcing the very systems we critique. “The Substance” compels us to reflect on the real consequences of societal expectations and the cost of self-transformation.
In an era where every TikTok video centers on “glowing up” and “getting ready with me,” it’s crucial to recognize how mainstream media is influencing societal pressure around beauty standards. While it may be disturbing, “The Substance” challenges audiences to critically examine how we are actively being harmed by norms surrounding women’s age and appearances.
Anna Peterson SC ’25 is from Scottsdale, Arizona. She studies politics but spends her free time making Spotify playlists, writing Letterboxd reviews and drinking too much coffee.
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