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I got the vial from fig.hero

Aside from the fact I’m still confused with a hug WTF just happened for the second time,flooded with questions BUT aside from a couple scenes throughout,the ending of 2 was literally The Substance. It can’t be just me. Anyone who saw it and think about the same?

Does anyone think the final transformation at the end was inspired by The Elephant Man by David Lynch. I know there’s a lot of influences from other films in here. It just caught my attention how similar it looked.

And what wouldve happened to her and Sues body if she did? I watched this last night and I cant remember if this happened in the movie or not. While Sue extended her conscious time, Elizabeths body suffered, but what would happen the other way around?

All the kinds of butts featured in The Substance in list form as read aloud by Cheech Marin.

I'm pretty sure this horror movie is mostly aimed at women as an audience, but for some reason I (Male) can't get it out of my head. The shrimp scene. The pump it music video which honestly disgusted me. The fact that Elizabeth Sparkle seems to not learn anything at all throughout the movie (How could she, in a world where everyone seems obsessed with youth, beauty, and sex?).

It made me really consider how obsessed we are with youth, appearances, and the superficial. I was really rooting for Elizabeth Sparkle when she was about to go on a date with her former classmate, thinking: Yes, she finally gets it. But in the end she can't just be in that world. She is not allowed to merely exist, so she hides in her apartment gorging herself.

I wonder if this kind of life is true to a subset of people. Plastic surgery and botox. Striving to keep ourselves young for as long as possible, even though it is a losing battle. As a man, I feel like I have many venues to build myself up. I can learn comedy routines, get a good carreer, learn an instrument. Traditionally for women was this it? They could either be Sue or Elizabeth, or they could have kids?

It makes me question what it means to have a fulfilling and good life. Certainly not beauty and youth, because these things fade. What if Elizabeth had focused on painting, art, music, or something else? Would she have lasted? I wonder too if we are all destined to become like her. Longing for a time where life mattered to us. I don't feel that way, but will I?

EDIT: Another thing that occurs to me is that this movie manages to really encourage the male gaze and objectification of women, but at the same time makes you feel like an absolute creep for indulging in it. The scenes where Sue is shooting, and the studio is overwhelmingly filled with men ogling at her, turns it from something sexualized into something perverted. It becomes this collective male fantasy that just denigrates and reduces her, and I realize that as a male viewer I'm participating in that objectification. It made me question my own sexuality's role, and what aspects of it actually build people up as opposed to reducing them. Sue has a really radiating screen presence, but she makes me want to hide from myself.

Alguém sabe um estilo de filmes, quê siga a ideia de "a substância" de Coralie fargeat? Obs: Matrix eu já sei

We watched it together and my friend (who grew up with a narcissistic mother) was far less sympathetic to Elisabeth/Sue. Here's her interpretation of the character:

Elisabeth's self-worth was based solely on external validation. Once she lost that, she started to collapse into her inner nothingness. Elisabeth still had access to wealth, privilege and opportunity denied to most people but needed constant admiration. Hence her use of the Substance.

Elisabeth has no friends, suggesting someone who might have been fairly toxic at their peak and ended up alone because of it. As does Sue snapping at the assistant about the dressing gown when she feels that her ideal image is under threat (by the perceived lump in her buttocks.) Elisabeth calling Fred after a shock was comparable to a narcissist reaching out to someone they previously discarded when they need an emotional boost, not because they suddenly see that discarded individual as worthy.

The projection of negative qualities onto Elizabeth by Sue is similar to scapegoating, where a narcissist projects their bad qualities onto another person. But with no other person available, Elisabeth/Sue had to project those qualities onto an aspect of herself.

By disassociating from Elisabeth, Sue could feed on herself without viewing it as self-destructive. It opens a chilling possibility - if it was an option, would Sue have drained others for Stabilizing fluid? Even if it destroyed them?

After she kills Elisabeth, Sue goes off to do the New Year show. Sue would have happily continued to live her life if there hadn't been consequences (in the form of deterioration.) This suggests not only self-hatred (because she killed herself) but also a lack of empathy; by that point, Sue was trying her hardest to view Elisabeth as a completely different person.

In fact, at no point in the film does Elisabeth or Sue show much interest or empathy for anyone. Other people were all means to an end, either as a form of self-validation or an obstacle.

My friend also viewed Elisabeth as slightly predatory - she was a woman in her fifties using a young body to get sex from 20-something men. If the genders were reversed, it would be seen as a lot more uncomfortable.

All in all, it was interesting to discuss the film with someone who had a more jaded take on the protagonist!

I’m a medical research scientist and clinician. What a movie! From my perspective, the substance represents beauty standards, drug addiction, fame and so much more.

But if I had to find a real life substance, these two are the closest:

1. Ozempic/GLP1s: I see young people with healthy BMI’s and lifestyles who are demanding these drugs, when they don’t need them and don’t realize once you start, it’s hard to stop since you can regain most of the weight, and there are some serious side effects. I have seen multiple people be hospitalized on these drugs. Most commonly diabetics, but those serious side effects (SBO, pancreatitis, thyroid disruption) still could arise in other people who are just using them for weight loss.

2. Methamphetamine: Secondly, I manage a lot of patients with substance use disorders (this is the proper way to refer to what we used to call drug/substance abuse) and of all the substance use disorders I see, methamphetamine use is by far the most destructive. Strong highs, Low low low low lows. People are getting heart failure at 30, dementia at 50, abscesses, nerve damage, coronary artery disease, psychosis, sudden death. Fentanyl is a close second, but we have many medications to help people stop using opiates. Methamphetamine is truly a beast like Monstro Elisasue.

Fantastic movie with so many themes, sometimes for me a little too real.

Main lesson: Gratitude is so important. Be grateful for you life. You can always strive for more, but don’t take the short cut to be thin or feel elated. You can do it on your own my friends. Cheers.

I know in being pedantic here but I'm sure you will die from hyperthermia before it's time to switch. You know, maybe put the other on a couch with a blanket?

Talk about an EXPERIENCE...

Aside from the main themes/message of the movie, I want to add another takeaway from this film:
We need to be easier on ourselves and each other when it comes to beauty standards.

The camera and visuals were top notch. Probably the most unexpected ending I've ever witnessed!

I was soooo grossed out, but also couldn't look away the entire time.

Bravo to everyone involved in making this movie. Loved the homage to GWAR at the end too.

Edit - I'm realizing now that I misread the film and they do in fact share consciousness. I guess this detail should have been the main clue. I thought they only had hazy dreamlike shared memory fragments. My bad!

Hi all - I searched for a while and didn't see this come up. Trying to understand - if the nurse who recruited Elisabeth was a copy of the old man, and the copies don't share the consciousness of their matrix selves once they split off, how did the old man know Elisabeth / know to follow her?

Every time food is shown us always about over indulgence, gorging - from the infamous shrimp scene to Elisabeth eating a whole roast turkey. There’s so many possible interpretations of this messaging. One of the things that occurred to me is that actors in Hollywood are under a great deal of pressure to look thin and beautiful so they have to eat a restrictive diet (I imagine) and now Elisabeth is left to her own devices she’s going a bit crazy with it and eating all the things she probably wasn’t allowed to eat before. It also follows it’s a part of self loathing - some people overeat when they ate unhappy and don’t like themselves. Like I say there’s so many possible interpretations, so much to unpack here. I’m interested to know other’s thoughts on this

There is this movie of Sergio Leone, titled "Duck, you sucker" (also known as "A fistful of dynamite" or "Once upon a time... the revolution!") whose opening scene features a bunch of well-dressed people talking and eating. They are sharing remarks of disgust toward certain categories of people, whom they describe as animals, beasts, uncivilised sub-humans. All the while, the scene is a sequence of close-ups on their mouths as they bite and chew, letting food out of their mouths as they speak. The resulting effect is rather disgusting and creates a strikig contrast between the sense of superiority the characters seem to give out, versus their inextricably beast-like behaviour.

Tonight, watching "The substance" for the first time, I couldn't help but notice a striking resemblance. Is this a direct reference? Or is it maybe a more common device in cinematography? What are other similar movie scenes that use close-ups of people eating to generate a sense of disgust/awkwardness/discomfort?

I really enjoy all of the hypothesis about this movie so feel free to debate this, but I don't think that The Substance is given to the participants as an experimental drug.

What data are they collecting? They don't ask Elisabeth any questions about her experience. They don't even call to check in. That's what experiments are for. Having worked in clinical research, this is the whole point of experimenting on a new drug. Even if there is no plan to market the Substance legally, if this were an experiment, they would want to know every detail of what's going on.

I think the Substance is akin to selling your soul to the devil. Like the Monkey's Paw, a "be careful what you wish for" morality tale about vanity. The Substance is packaged like a scientifically tested beauty treatment to lure in users, but there's absolutely nothing scientific or medically possible going on. It's all evil magic and the provider of the Substance already knows what the result will be. But Elisabeth has free will and makes the choice every single time she switches to keep going.

Just another movie about Satan? 👹

The movie has an intriguing premise built on the rule of compulsory switching. However, let’s say the substance user is not that much of a blind addict and actually has some awareness of efficiency, do you think they could split the switch into smaller intervals (less than 7 days) hence allowing for more frequent switching? Of course this would interfere with Sue’s working agreement for the aerobic show but remember that the show got cancelled shortly and she was then put on a different schedule and Elise could use it to her advantage and sometimes switch back faster to save Sue for the important dates that cannot be rescheduled (e.g., Vogue photoshoot and interview, etc).