'The Substance' Ending Completely Ruined the Movie

Beforehand, I do want to clarify that I respect each and every single person that was part of the cast and crew of this movie. Filmmaking is not an easy task, let alone making a movie as ambitious as this one.

If you have been to the movies lately, I bet you have seen (or at least heard of) the new movie by Coralie Fargeat, “The Substance’”; a body horror movie that follows the story of a famous actress named Elizabeth Spark (played by Demi Moore), who is facing the hard reality that many celebrities do: getting old and losing popularity. In denial, she purchases a product named 'The Substance’, that creates a second version of herself (Margaret Qualley) , but younger, prettier, better. This better version is named Sue. Ultimately, this movies asks us the question: how far are you willing to go to reach an irrealistic ideal of perfection and success?

As a filmmaker, I completely enjoyed the world and characters Coralie Fargeat presented during the first two thirds of the movie. I could even say that the movie has one of the best representations on the big screen of what it is like to live with an eating disorder; but it was completely destroyed by the last part.

WARNING! SPOILERS

All began going sideways the moment Elizabeth and Sue fight after Elizabeth tried to kill Sue for abusing the use of Elizabeth's bone marrow, causing Elizabeth to age drastically. Sue kicks Elizabeth, but her kick is with such supernatural strength, that Elizabeth flies across the living room. Before this shot, the world and situation that was presented in the movie made sense inside the wold of the movie itself; but the kick felt like extremely unrealistic to the reality that was alive in the movie. From there it went even more downhill.

I do understand that the movie is a satire, but the last minutes of it felt like a completely different movie. When The Monster appeared on stage, and began bleeding, I had lost all my interest in the movie. Finally, the second to last scene of the movie, when the monster dissolves on Elizabeth's Hollywood star, felt tacky. I could not believe such storytelling was in the same project as the one I had seen an hour earlier. The masterpiece that was presented to us in such clever (and sometimes) subtle way, was blacked out by what felt lack of originality. It was as if you were seeing “The Godfather” and suddenly all the characters in the world became villains from Marvel.

I believe that this movie had an amazing opportunity and idea to fully represent how it feels like to be a woman, nevertheless, because of the final scenes, it was poorly done. I would have had loved for Fargeat to explore deeper the feelings of Elizabeth and Sue realizing that they destroyed themselves by trying to reach perfection. With that being said, I do encourage to watch the movie, as it has many components from a filmmaking point of view, that is worth watching (just pause the movie when Elizabeth kills Sue).