"Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself?"
"People always ask for something new. It's inevitable. At 50, well, it stops."
— Harvey
The Substance is a 2024 Black Comedy Body Horror film directed and written by Coralie Fargeat (Revenge) and starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, and Dennis Quaid. The movie also features original music by Benjamin Stefanski (Raffertie)
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The movie concerns Elisabeth Sparkle (Moore), a once-popular Hollywood actress-turned-TV-aerobics-instructor who's suddenly fired by her boss Harvey (Quaid) on her 50th birthday due to her age. Her morale at its lowest, she receives a proposal from a laboratory regarding "The Substance", a drug that "unlocks" the user's DNA, and will transform them into the "better version of themself" that they've always dreamt about. When Elisabeth uses it, and "Sue" (Qualley) enters the picture, she spirals into an unpredictable path that threatens to unravel everything.
A co-production of France, Britain, and America, the film made its premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and is distributed by Mubi worldwide and Metropolitan Filmexport in France. It was released in American and British theaters and Mubi's streaming service on September 20, 2024, while its French release occurred on November 6, 2024.
Previews: Official Clip | Coming Soon, Official Teaser, Official Trailer.
The tropes must be respected.
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#–F
- 555: Used in both Fred's and the Substance representative's phone numbers.
- Abhorrent Admirer:
- Elisabeth's former classmate, Fred, serves as a Downplayed Example. When they reunite for the first time since tenth grade, he comes on a bit too strong, gushing about how he's been avidly following her career and how she's "still as beautiful as ever". His awkward enthusiasm doesn't seem flirtatious, suggesting he's simply a starstruck Nervous Wreck rather than predatory. Elisabeth appears to take it that way, too; she accepts his phone number (though the slip of paper lands in a muddy puddle) and even tries to arrange a date with him afterward.
- Played Straight with Elisabeth's next-door neighbor, Oliver, who peppers his introduction to Sue with sexual innuendos and later persists in asking her out despite her obvious lack of interest.
- Advertised Extra: Despite his name being on the film's poster, Dennis Quaid only gets about eight minutes of screentime in the entire film.
- Alcohol-Induced Idiocy:
- Elisabeth is initially dismissive of the Substance and chucks the USB drive promoting it in the trash. It's after she drinks martinis to the point of throwing up that she starts thinking it might be a good idea to get the shady drug after all. She also smashes a snow globe and makes a dent in her giant portrait in a drunken rage.
- Elisabeth claims Sue was drunk when she went against the rules and took an extra shot of stabilizer from Elisabeth, which might be true since Sue was out partying.
- Always Need What You Gave Up: This is the nature of how the Substance works. On a symbolic level, it's representative of how Elisabeth is so addicted to living as Sue that when the Substance Representative first asks if she wishes to quit the treatments, she refuses, only relenting when Sue steals so much of her spinal fluid that she degenerates into a deformed hunchback. Even then, she's still unable to go through with killing Sue because she desperately wants to recapture her glory days. On a literal level, Sue needs Elisabeth to supply her with Stabilizer continually, and when she angrily kills her upon learning Elisabeth attempted to do the same, she's left with no spinal fluid left to keep herself stable.
- Ambiguous Time Period: In addition to its physical location, there are a few subtle details that confuse what time period the film takes place in. The film features flat-screen televisions, USB flash drives, and what appear to be smartphones, but there's no mention at all of the internet, Elisabeth's replacement is found through a classified ad in a physical newspaper, and the biggest star around hosts an aerobics television show, something more popular in the 1980s than modern times. However, a Freeze-Frame Bonus shows that a car Sue is riding in is registered in 2022.
- And I Must Scream: Downplayed. One of Monstro Elisasue's faces is locked into a permanent scream, unable to close her mouth or even vocalize anything beyond horrible, gasping coughs. It's clear she's in as much pain as possible. Her situation ends up being temporary, though; when the rest of Monstro Elisasue's body collapses on itself, this face manages to detach itself and slither away, expiring soon after.
- Arc Words: "You are one." The man behind the Substance says this as a warning to his clients before they use it to create a "better version" of themselves. This comes back to haunt Elisabeth and her younger self Sue in different ways. For Elisabeth, she nearly terminates Sue but is ultimately unable to do so because she still craves the fame and stardom Sue gets, which ultimately causes her death when Sue, feeling betrayed, kills her. For Sue, killing Elisabeth proves to be her undoing when her body begins to fall apart due to running out of the stabilizer that she needs to extract from Elisabeth, leading her to use the remaining Activator serum in the hopes of regenerating a better copy of herself. Instead, it gives her a more monstrous and grotesque form resembling an amalgamation of both her and Elisabeth's body parts. Ironically, it's this cancerous merger of mass that finally takes the true meaning of those words to heart, only far too late to save herself from her inevitable process of self-destruction.
- Are You Sure You Want to Do That?: As Elisabeth prepares to terminate Sue, a man's voice echoes in her mind, questioning her certainty and warning that there's no turning back. She hesitates for a moment, but continues until an epiphany halts her hand.
- Artistic License – Biology:
- The opening shot is of an egg yolk being injected with something, which seemingly causes it to eject a second, slightly smaller yolk. In reality, the yolk isn't actually what develops into the chick; that's the blastodisc, which the yolk just supplies nutrients to. The shot does show the blastodisc, but it's opposite to the injection site and doesn't seem to be replicated alongside the yolk.
- Apart from the obvious fictional logic of the Substance's replication effects, the film shows Elisabeth's pupil dividing into two pupils, which slide around her iris like the egg yolks in the beginning, but that doesn't make sense with what a pupil actually is: a hole in the iris around which the whole of the iris contracts and expands.
- Humans don't contain nearly as much spinal fluid as depicted, at least not all in one spot where it could be drawn out as quickly as Sue does. It's implied that the stabilizer fluid is a separate thing specific to Substance users, as it requires the switch to regenerate.
- Audible Gleam: The earrings Sue and later Monstro Elisasue wears before the New Year's show give off a lovely, delicate chime while dangling.
- Bait-and-Switch:
- When Sue meets Harvey after her audition, she claims she can only work every other week due to caring for her ailing mother. Harvey then takes on a seemingly disappointed and more serious tone, suggesting that he's reconsidering hiring her, only to then tell Sue that they're so desperate to have her on the show that they'll gladly work around her schedule.
- Sue arrives at an empty set, and an aide tells her in a rather insistent tone that Harvey wants to see her right away. It's easy to assume he's about to pink-slip her. And initially, his serious tone and facial expression convey that impression as well. But then he's beside himself with joy, as Sue has become a spectacular success so much that he plans to move her into a prime time slot instead of keeping her on the morning show.
- Ballroom Blitz: What happens when Monstro Elisasue shows up to the New Year's Eve special. Nobody dies, except for Monstro Elisasue herself, but the entire studio audience winds up drenched in blood.
- Bathroom Stall of Overheard Insults: After filming an episode of her aerobics program, Elisabeth sneaks in to use the men's washroom when the women's washroom is out of order. This is where she overhears Harvey insulting her age and planning to fire her over the phone.Harvey: I don't care if we have to see EVERY FUCKING YOUNG GIRL IN THIS FUCKING TOWN in the next few weeks!
Caller: Harvey, we don't—
Harvey: Look, I'll make it simple: We need her YOUNG. We need her HOT. We need her NOW. How the old bitch has been able to stick around for this long, that's... (scoffs) THAT'S the fuckin' mystery to me!
Caller: She's an Oscar winner—
Harvey: Oh, 'Oscar winner' my ass! When was that, back in the '30s for King Kong? (laughs)
Caller: You promised—
Harvey: No! I don't give a FUCK what we promised her! This is network TV, not a fucking charity!
Caller: You still have to deal wi—
Harvey: FIND ME SOMEBODY NEW. NOW! Hey, did you know that a woman's fertility starts to decrease about the age of 25? - Beauty Is Best: Elisabeth (and the entire industry she works in) certainly thinks so, which is why she feels the need to take The Substance in the first place.
- Beauty to Beast: Much of the film's Body Horror revolves around watching the beautiful Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley be subjected to grotesque, horrifying transformations over the course of the film.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Could very well be the subtitle of the film. Elisabeth starts the film insecure about her aging looks and turns to the Substance to give her a fresh lease on life. Sadly, her intense feelings of self-loathing only deepen after "Sue", her younger self, keeps getting all the praise and attention, not helped by her continually abusing the 7-day restriction, causing her original body to slowly wither away. Eventually, Sue refuses to switch back for three months and, when forced to switch back to restock the stabilization fluid, awakens in the body of a frail and hideous old crone, appearing far older than she did initially. And that's not even getting into what happens with Monstro Elisasue.
- Between My Legs:
- When Harvey first meets Sue in his office, there's a shot showing his legs from behind, framing Sue who's in the background. Given Harvey's sleazy attitude towards women and the fact that he's an allusion to a certain infamous real-life producer, the implications of such a shot are disturbing.
- Late in the movie, the extremely aged Elisabeth is framed between Sue's legs as the latter lets her crawl back to the living room before continuing to beat her up. The angle of the shot is identical to the previous one with Harvey and Sue.
- Big "NO!": After waking and seeing the damage done to her body after Sue abuses the 7-day limit a second time, Elisabeth lets out a big one that echoes throughout her penthouse.
- Bio-Augmentation: The Substance "unlocks" the user's DNA to create a Physically Younger, Hotter and Sexier version of themselves. It's explicitly shown that the duplicate is made from the same genetic blueprint, as details like birthmarks are carried over. The other self is essentially the same person, only polished to perfection.
- Birthday Beginning: The story begins on Elisabeth's 50th birthday, which is rough for her as she gets fired for being deemed too old for her job.
- A Birthday, Not a Break: Being fired for your age is pretty bad, but it's a whole new level when it's on Elisabeth's birthday of all days.
- Black Comedy: The tone isn't unlike a modern-day Tales from the Crypt episode, with broad, highly animated performances and notes of dry humor. For instance, when Elisabeth orders the "termination" syringe, it comes with a note that reads "we're sorry you didn't appreciate your Substance experience", much like any other cancelled subscription.
- Blood-Spattered Innocents: A little girl dressed up to look like Sue is among the audience for the New Year's Eve Special, and winds up just as drenched in Monstro Elisasue's blood as the rest of them.
- Body Horror: Oh yes. David Cronenberg and Brian Yuzna would be proud.
- After taking the Activator, Elisabeth is wracked in pain, collapsing to the floor as Sue, the younger version of herself, quite literally splits her back open like a cocoon and crawls out.
- The effects of misusing The Substance take a toll on Elisabeth, with her older body beginning to age and mutate, starting with her fingers, travelling down to her legs, and eventually turning her into a grotesque, hairless old hunchback.
- Finally, after her body starts to fall apart before the New Year's Eve special, Sue takes the Activator again as a last resort. The result is Monstro Elisasue, a grotesque, misshapen amalgamation of cancerous lumps, misplaced faces, and errant teeth.
- Invoked. Before her transformation, Elisabeth's defeatism and depression caused her to see every sign of aging as grotesque, almost as if her wrinkles and sagging skin were forms of disfigurement. The camera reinforces this perception, framing her aging features quite nightmarishly. Later, when she encounters an elderly man who's revealed to be the true self of the handsome nurse who first recommended the Substance, the camera and makeup exaggerate his age, turning him into something more like a wizened toad than an ordinary old man.
- Body Motifs:
- The spine is given a large amount of focus, with camera shots lingering on the back, Elisabeth wearing a hospital gown and a backless dress, and the nurse examining her spine. This turns out to be where the "other self" created by the Substance emerges from the body when birthed, and the other self must draw fluid from the spine of the matrix body to inject as a stabilizer lest they break down. Sue also has a nightmare about viscera spilling from her back when her catsuit is unzipped down the spine. As Elisabeth and Sue get more and more destroyed, emphasis is given to the hunching and bending.
- Breasts and butts, per the movie's commentary on objectification and male gazes. Both Elisabeth and Sue have nude scenes in the bathroom with torso-up mirror shots given focus, and Sue checks out her breasts upon her emergence. The New Year's Eve show Sue is set to host features topless showgirls, and breasts feature in the Body Horror as Elisabeth's breasts turn into dangling flaps at her most warped by the time Sue stole, and then Monstro Elisasue's deformed blend of body parts includes excessive breasts, and a breast swells and drops out of her face on a cord before falling onto the floor. Many shots focus on the rear ends of Elisabeth and Sue (and even one of Sue's flings), and this gets turned to Fan Disservice too as Body Horror sets in.
- Bold Inflation: The instructions for the Substance come in cards like this, however it's mainly the actions to take that are made bold and large, while the conditions are made smaller and easier to miss, likely as part of a Schmuck Bait to ignore them.YOU ACTIVATE ONLY ONCE
YOU STABILIZE EVERY DAY
YOU SWITCH EVERY SEVEN DAYS WITHOUT EXCEPTION
REMEMBER YOU ARE ONE - Bookends:
- The film opens with a prolonged shot over Elisabeth's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, going from when she was a revered celebrity to later on when she has been all but forgotten. The shot also ends after a man spills food and splatters red sauce all over the star. The final shot is what remains of Elisabeth's face on a fleshy mass crawling on top of the star, smiling one last time before melting into a red smear of blood.
- Early in the film, Elisabeth sees her face being torn from the paper of a Sparkle Your Life billboard that's being taken down as a sign of her being rejected and seen as no longer beautiful. Near the end of the film, Monstro Elisasue rips Elisabeth's face from a framed portrait to use as a mask for her New Year's Eve show costume, admiring it as more beautiful than hers.
- Brick Joke: Before meeting Sue, a casting director remarks on the previous auditionee, dismissing her by saying he wishes her boobs had been in the middle of her face instead of "that nose", and Sue is greeted with the assessment that "everything sure is in the right place this time." This latter line is ironically echoed upon the emergence of the deeply warped Monstro Elisasue, and the former remark is delivered upon when Monstro Elisasue's cell-dividing mess of a body pushes and drops a small disembodied breast out from an orifice in the middle of her face, showing just how absurd, horrific, and unsexy the scenario of boobs where a nose goes would actually be.
- Broken Record: In the trailer."Would you like to stop? Would you like to stop? Would you like to stop? Would you like to stop?"
- Camp: As expected of a Homage to 1980s cheese and body horror as well as various melodramas about fleeting fame and fortune, a lot of the film exaggerates and plays with tropes in an ironic and satirical way, ranging from the over-the-top Workout Fanservice routine in the vein of campy workouts like Richard Simmons' Tae Bo output, all the way to the comically gory finale, where fountains upon fountains of cheesy blood spew from Monstro Elisasue as Harvey and a stage worker shove her back and forth like angry kids on a playground.
- The Cameo: French actor Vincent Colombe, who previously appeared in several of Fargeat's films (the short Reality+ and her debut feature Revenge), makes a cameo as one of Harvey's associates.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: In The Climax, just as Elisabeth is about to kill Sue, her eyes fall on a bouquet accompanied by a motivational note and other messages celebrating her upcoming debut. The sight triggers memories of her glorious days in the spotlight as Elisabeth. A sudden wave of remorse washes over her for nearly taking away that opportunity, and she halts, ultimately refraining from injecting the full dose of the Termination fluid into Sue.
- Cardboard Box of Unemployment: Harvey drops a box full of Elisabeth's belongings into her arms when she returns to the studio after she's officially canned.
- Carload of Cool Kids: Sue's initiation into the nightlife begins as she hops into a car filled with lively partygoers, reflecting her eagerness to relive her youth and embrace her new identity.
- Catapult Nightmare: Elisabeth springs awake from a nightmare she has about Sue's guts falling out of her back. Later, Sue does the same when she dreams about getting a chicken leg out of her body through her belly button.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- The slip of paper with her old classmate's phone number, which Elisabeth initially discards, is later used to ask him out on a date.
- The remaining Activator in the bottle after the Activation plays a role at the end, when Sue uses it on herself in an attempt to renew her body... without success.
- Chekhov's Gunman: While Elisabeth is in the hospital, a young nurse examines her briefly before slipping the USB containing the Substance into her pocket, subtly encouraging her to purchase and use it. Later, Elisabeth encounters this man again—or rather, his original, more deteriorated counterpart—who warns her that Sue will continue overstepping boundaries, just as his doppelgänger clearly did with him.
- Chronic Self-Deprecation: Elisabeth just can't be happy with who she is or how she is. She puts herself down, judges herself harshly, and ruins any chance she has to be really happy by the end.
- Clone Degeneration: The inevitable result if a double produced from the Substance is deprived of the stabilizer. After Sue beats Elisabeth to death in a fit of impulsive rage, and her supply of the stabilizer runs out, she quickly begins to degenerate, starting with her teeth falling out, followed by one of her fingernails and an earlobe. Using what's left of the activator on herself backfires, with the resultant clone-of-a-clone (dubbed "Monstro Elisasue") even more hideous and mutated than Elisabeth was at her worst. It's a moot point; the Clone Degeneration happens even quicker with Monstro, leading her to eventually begin rupturing like an overfilled water balloon, and ultimately explode, with the sole surviving piece dissolving away into blood not long after.
- Close on Title: The movie title appears in large letters after the final scene.
- Color Motifs: Women who are dismissed and disregarded or falling out of men's favor are consistently dressed in shades of blue, from Elisabeth at the start of the film to the auditionee seen from behind before Sue arrives, to Harvey's assistant Isabella to Sue once she starts degenerating and Monstro Elisasue. This is done as contrast to the hyperfeminine pink Sue sports when she makes a splash as the idealized young woman that men can't get enough of.
- Comfort Food: Elisabeth turns to junk food as a substitute for her increasingly miserable life.
- Converse with the Unconscious: Elisabeth and Sue can't be conscious at the same time, but the active one will occasionally speak to the other.
- Before going out to a party, Sue tells Elisabeth that she won't stay out late and will be back in time to switch. This ends up being the night she takes an extra shot of stabilizer from Elisabeth, so she doesn't exactly fulfill her promise.
- After Harvey gives Sue the chance to host the New Year's Eve Show, there's a montage of Sue taking more and more stabilizer from Elisabeth while she tells her about her flourishing career (using it as an excuse to take those forbidden doses).
- Sue sees that Elisabeth has trashed the apartment in a rage (leaving it to Sue to clean up) and reacts by calling her names and screaming at her to "stop it".
- Elisabeth plans to terminate Sue but changes her mind at the last minute, telling her that she needs her and begging her to come back.
- The one-sidedness of the relationships across alter egos is emphasized by the fact that, even when they become simultaneously active, they exchange zero words during the extended confrontation before Sue kills Elisabeth. They only ever speak to each other when one is absent.
- Copycat Mockery: Elisabeth watches Sue being interviewed in a talk show and mocks her sugary-sweet answers by repeating them with a simpering voice, especially upset that Sue is acting like Elisabeth is a has-been with no responsibility for her success.
- Cover Innocent Eyes and Ears: When Monstro Elisasue is exposed at the New Year's Show, a mother in the audience quickly covers the eyes of her daughter.
- Creator Provincialism: Apart from giving what appears to be Hollywood a few strangely European notes, the French director Coralie Fargeat also prominently includes a French cookbook. Amusingly, it's treated as Foreign Queasine.
- Daydream Surprise: A surreal sequence happens when Sue causes chaos on set due to a bizarre body mutation, only to reveal it was a nightmare, rather than a scene from her work.
- Deadly Nosebleed: Sue gets this as an indicator that she needs to inject herself with stabilizer immediately. It eventually worsens into little bits of herself detaching and falling off when her body completely runs out of it.
- Descent into Addiction: The entire film is basically a metaphor for both drugs and plastic surgery addiction. The more Elisabeth uses the Substance, the more dependent she grows on it, and the more her younger self detests the moments when she's unable to experience its euphoric effects. However, Elisabeth also grows to detest how vain and shallow she acts as Sue. This culminates in Sue beginning to drain more and more of Elisabeth's spinal fluid to keep herself stable, horrifically destroying Elisabeth's body in the process the same way excessive drug use (and plastic surgery to a lesser extent) destroys its user. The fact that the Substance must be injected via needle draws its strongest parallels to heroin, meth, and fentanyl, three of the most addictive and physically debilitating recreational drugs one can take. In the end, Elisabeth is literally killed by the manifestation of her Substance abuse, and without a host body to keep her alive, Sue herself begins to quickly deteriorate. Her becoming desperate enough to inject a second dose of Activation fluid is similar to a junkie at the end of their rope and completely out of options being reduced to injecting themselves with whatever random dirty needle they can find lying around, ultimately becoming an even more twisted and disgusting version of herself before completely falling apart as her body is consumed by her addiction.
- Didn't Think This Through:
- Sue resorts to forcefully draining Elisabeth of all the Stabilizer fluid currently in her body and stashes it in numerous jars, allowing Sue to stabilize herself on a daily basis without doing the weekly switch. After three months of living her life to the fullest, and only a night before her big New Year's Eve show, Sue discovers her stash of fluid has run out, and the only way to get more is to switch back with Elisabeth so that the latter's body can produce it.
- When Elisabeth decides not to terminate Sue and instead revives her, Sue sees the Termination syringe and attacks Elisabeth in an impulsive rage and eventually beats her to death. Having not gotten the aforementioned Stabilizer fluid that she needed to maintain her body, the following night Sue begins to literally fall apart right before her big New Year's Eve show.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- The Substance use is in many ways treated like drug abuse by shooting up—its kit comes with syringes and even a tie for the arm, not unlike heroin users doing the same thing to regulate their doses.
- Furthermore, it's used to escape from reality and the pain of difficult emotions.
- The injection site also develops a pus-filled wound, like those who shoot up drugs.
- The release of the film also comes on the heels of the rise of off-label use of injectable diabetes medication Semaglutide, best known by the commercial name Ozempic, for weight loss. While ostensibly used for good purposes, both the Substance and Semaglutide have a capacity to be abused, as evidenced by Ozempic rapidly being picked up for use as a weight loss medicine, at the expense of those who have a much greater need for it.
- Rather than trying to maintain a balance of their two selves, Elisabeth and Sue both try to dominate and end up making each other's lives miserable, which can be seen as an allegory for how women in high positions are conditioned to be competitive and tear each other down rather than helping each other. They're literally envious of their own selves.
- Women in show business are often pressured to preserve their looks via cosmetic surgery and then mocked when repeated—or failed—procedures distort their appearances. Elisabeth takes the Substance in a desperate bid to reclaim her youth and beauty, but it destroys her body and eventually mutates her into a creature so grotesque that the New Year's Eve audience attacks her.
- When Elisabeth takes her turn during the switch, she obsessively cooks and eats, while Sue is disgusted by the mess and has a nightmare where she pulls a chicken drumstick out of her stomach. This is a parallel to the binge-purge cycle of bulimia.
- The scene that cuts between closeups of Sue's crotch and shots of Elisabeth's whole hand inside the turkey as she viciously tears out its insides.
- The Substance use is in many ways treated like drug abuse by shooting up—its kit comes with syringes and even a tie for the arm, not unlike heroin users doing the same thing to regulate their doses.
- Downer Ending: Elisabeth attempts to terminate Sue but loses her nerve, Sue kills Elisabeth but starts falling apart before her New Year's Eve show, and as a last-ditch effort, resorts to taking a forbidden second dose of the Activator. Rather than renewing her body, it creates Monstro Elisasue, who causes a panic at the studio before fleeing and breaking apart on the streets, leaving only a shambling mess with Elisabeth's face, who dissolves on her Hollywood star. And just to make things harsher, her remains are dispassionately swept away by a floor scrubber. Even worse, it's implied that the vicious cycle of toxic fame and beauty standards will continue even after this incident, neither will Harvey and his associates stop looking for the next "young and pretty" starlet after Elisabeth's and Sue's deaths, nor will "The Substance" stop being produced, meaning there will be more future victims to come.
- Drama Panes: Elisabeth spends a few moments vacantly staring out the window of her penthouse on the day she gets fired from her show.
- Drone of Dread: EDM music, electronic synths, and scrapes are frequent elements in the promotional material, and their harsh notes send a feeling of uncertainty to the viewer.
- Drowning My Sorrows: After getting fired, Elisabeth downs several martinis in a bar on the night of her birthday. This results in her drunkenly throwing up in her bathroom and calling the Substance supplier to place an order.
- Eldritch Transformation:
- The transformation process induced by the Substance causes extra pupils to grow within one's eyes before the "better self" is birthed into existence by bursting out of the person's back, leaving behind the still-living body of the original with a gaping incision stretching across their back.
- And then there's the creation of Monstro Elisasue, which more than emphasizes the "Eldritch" in Eldritch Abomination.
- Exact Words: The nurse who recommends The Substance to Elisabeth says it "changed [his] life". Later, Elisabeth runs into the actual nurse, who has likely prematurely aged from the Substance by violating the 7-day switch rule and bitterly asks if it changed his life for the better.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: When Elisabeth gets fired, she walks down a corridor sporting posters of her show from different eras. Her haircuts and fashion can clearly date them to the '80s, '90s, and early 2000s.
- Fairytale Motifs: Despite its sci-fi bent and Body Horror genre, there are also parallels to fairy tales.
- Like Snow White, the story features prominent mirror-gazing, a beautiful older woman angry at a beautiful young woman who's directly usurping her claim to fame, with the older woman eventually becoming a witch-like crone, trying to disrupt her rival's life and kill her, and (like the Disney version) dying in the crone form. The scene of Elisabeth's cooking frenzy to ruin the kitchen for Sue also invokes a witch brewing a potion for revenge, like the Disney Evil Queen does.
- Like Cinderella, a young woman lives an enchanted life on a time limit, and things will go disastrously wrong if she doesn't return home before time is up—Cinderella goes to the ball in a pretty dress but midnight ends the spell, while Sue lives as a young beautiful woman, but falls apart physically without being stabilized daily and switching with Elisabeth at the end of a week. Near the end of the film, Sue is about to reach her greatest heights while decked out in a blue Pimped-Out Dress, but time finally runs out for her as her body starts falling apart and she runs back home, paralleling Cinderella's flight from the ball.
- Like Beauty and the Beast, a vain person is stuck in a hunched, monstrous form as an ironic punishment and is juxtaposed opposite a beautiful young woman, and the story has hints that somebody loving the self-loathing Elisabeth is her path to salvation. Roses also partially kick-start both stories, with the fairy tale's conflict coming from a rose being picked, and Elisabeth being set off to watch the Substance video when she fixates on her farewell bouquet of roses coming with the message "you were amazing!" A few specific scenes evoke the Disney version: Elisabeth smashing the picture of her younger self in a rage (Beast slashing the portrait of his human self) and Sue walking around the living room after Elisabeth has trashed it (Belle exploring the West Wing).
- Fan Disservice: Constantly.
- Demi Moore naked? Always a welcome sight. Naked Demi Moore, hunched over on the bathroom floor with a full-sized woman crawling out of her bloody, split-open back? Yikes.
- Curvy, beautiful Margaret Qualley dancing and thrusting in a barely concealing leotard? Lovely. The use of contrast, juxtaposition, and editing, not to mention what it means for the character in the context of the story? Revolting.
- It works for Elisabeth. She's visually a beautiful woman, but her self-loathing and lack of confidence make her unattractive.
- In the third act, Elisabeth is turned into an old, Gollum-like lady after being in stasis for three months. Hunched back, deflated sagging breasts and all. And she's seen stumbling around her apartment naked until she's able to find some clothes.
- Fanservice: The camera takes many appreciative looks at Sue's young, nubile body, whether nude in the shower or in a skintight aerobics uniform. We also see a pre-Substance Elisabeth in the shower, who despite her insecurities, looks fantastic—she is played by Demi Moore, after all.
- Fingore:
- After Sue first disobeys the weekly balance by taking an extra sample of stabiliser from Elisabeth's body, Elisabeth wakes up to find her right index finger has become old and wizened, almost necrotic. This is the first warning sign to how the rest of her body deteriorates as Sue continues to do this.
- When she finally runs out of stabilizer, and kills Elisabeth before obtaining more from the latter's body, one of the side-effects of Sue's deterioration is that her teeth and fingernails begin to loosen and fall out.
- Forceful Faceplant: In the film's climax Sue and Elisabeth fight in the bathroom where Sue pummels Elisabeth by repeatedly smashing her head into the mirror until the latter collapses.
- Foreign Queasine: Elisabeth thumbs through a big book of French recipes, which seem to be almost exclusively dishes that many people would find gross, like tripe, veal brains, and foie gras. Elisabeth gags in reaction. Amusingly, the writer/director of the film herself is French.
- Foreshadowing:
- At the beginning of the film, Elisabeth tosses her snow globe at a framed poster of her younger self, cracking the glass right over the picture's eye, and several shots linger on this throughout the film after this point. Her final form Monstro Elisasue is missing an eye on one of her faces.
- The passerby dropping a burger on Elisabeth's Walk of Fame star in the opening montage and smudging ketchup over it before it's cleaned off foreshadows what remains of Elisabeth crawling over the star, melting and leaving a red puddle that eventually gets scrubbed clean.
- Before Sue auditions, one of the producers discussing the previous applicant dryly comments that he wishes her breasts were on her face instead of 'that nose'. During the climax, Monstro Elisasue is shown growing a breast out of her face, where a nose or eyeball would usually be. The girl who auditioned before Sue also states she's "just dying to get the part", which literally happens to Sue and Elisabeth at the end of the film.
- Before Harvey fires Elisabeth, the walls of the studio's hallway are full of promotional photos for her show throughout the years. When Elisabeth goes to collect her things after Harvey officially cancels her show, the walls are completely bare, devoid of any trace of her being there. After what remains of Elisabeth dissolves into a bloody puddle on her Hollywood Walk of Fame star, said puddle is completely wiped up by a floor scrubber, erasing any trace of her being there.
- The doctors declare Elisabeth to be alright after her Surprise Car Crash, but a nurse performs a last-second exam on her back and spine and calls her "a good candidate". During the activation process, Sue is "born" by painfully breaking through Elisabeth's back, and the stabilization fluid comes from Elisabeth's spine.
- While Sue is busy dragging Elisabeth's body into a secret room to keep themselves hidden when they switch bodies, the camera switches back and forth between closeups of the faces of Elisabeth and Sue on Elisabeth's framed poster and billboard respectively, facing each other through the apartment window, with Sue removing the poster of Elisabeth from view afterwards. Later on in the film, Elisabeth and Sue face off against each other after Elisabeth nearly terminates Sue, with Sue removing Elisabeth from the picture by killing her.
- After the birth of Monstro Elisasue, we see a bouquet of flowers, which says, "Break a leg". After the ballroom showdown goes wrong, and Monstro attempts to escape, she falls because one of her legs completely breaks apart, followed by the rest of the gory body falling to the ground and exploding.
- The Substance serum quite clearly shows a sticker labelled as "Single Use – Discard After Use". And, well... Sue doesn't take heed. For that matter, the transformation scene could arguably fall here, since it very much clues us in immediately that something has gone wrong, but we don't know the extent until Monstro's face is visible in the mirror. As the two women merge, we again see the single-use sticker flash on screen as the two women writhe in pain, coupled with the previously psychedelic but somewhat visually cohesive visuals now completely warped.
- During her exercise show, Elisabeth tells her audience, "Work those bikini bods! Do you want to look like a giant jellyfish on the beach?" At the end, after Monstro falls and explodes, what's left of her crawls to the star on the Walk of Fame and dies... then melts, exactly like a jellyfish on the beach.
- Elisabeth scrubbing lipstick off of her face and smearing herself is visually similar and opposite to Monstro Elisasue crudely applying lipstick on the paper cut-out of her former Elisabeth face, smearing it.
- After her first transgression against Elisabeth, Sue has a nightmare about a mess of viscera spilling from her spine. A horrible mass of biological matter (in the form of Monstro Elisasue) does emerge from Sue's spine when her continued transgressions against Elisabeth kill her stabilizer supply and push her to take the Substance activator herself.
- When Harvey introduces Sue to the shareholders while she's suffering Clone Degeneration, he tells her that they're "dying to meet her", putting extra emphasis on the word "dying". Sue would shortly afterwards transform herself into Monstro Elisasue and end up dying.
- Four Is Death: When Sue decides to take one more dose of stabilizer than prescribed, she chooses capsule Number 4. Fittingly, it marks the beginning of the end for Elisabeth.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- Sue's age is never entirely clear, or what age she even claims to be. When the executives rewind her audition tape, the audio is fuzzy, but if you listen closely, she's saying she's 25. Seems Harvey's tirade about women peaking at 25 left a deep mark on Elisabeth's psyche.
- The calendar that Elisabeth uses to keep track of her weeks as herself and Sue reveals that the scene is set in May of 2022. A little deduction also reveals that Sue was "born" on May 2, while Elisabeth's birthday could be either April 30 or May 1, depending on whether she created Sue before or after midnight.
- Freudian Trio: Elisabeth's stagewise transformation mirrors Freud's structural trio. She starts as The Superego, who's an aging woman, bound by social and professional expectations, obsessed with perfection, youth, and fame. Using the Substance, she creates Sue, The Id. She's a radiant, impulsive embodiment of eternal desire and pleasure, but her rising fame and indulgence soon corrupt her. Driven by instant gratification, Sue recklessly consumes more stabilizer from Elisabeth, ignoring the fact that her survival depends on the matrix. Her misuse eventually gives birth to Monstro Elisasue, The Ego, who's bashful, anxious, and discouraged. Despite her fear of the New Year's Eve special, she ultimately appears in Sue's blue, embellished dress, covered by a photograph of Elisabeth's face. When her true form is accidentally revealed, she pleads for acceptance, claiming she means no harm and is genuinely happy to see everyone, despite the audience mercilessly turning on her.
G–R
- Godzilla Threshold: After killing Elizabeth, a deteriorating Sue desperately uses the remaining activator serum to try and reverse the process as a last resort, despite it being single-use. It unfortunately just makes her situation ten times worse rather than improve it in any way.
- Go Out with a Smile: Elisabeth's face, which is all that remains of Monstro Elisasue after she falls apart, smiles one last time as she recalls her Glory Days before she dissolves into a bloody smear on her Hollywood Walk Of Fame star.
- Gorn: Plenty, with lots of guts, blood, viscera, and body parts falling off, but special mention goes to Monstro Elisasue spraying gallons of blood to the audience before being torn apart into an unrecognizable mess of intestines and organs.
- Gross-Up Close-Up: Coralie Fargeat's specialty, it's all over the place here.
- Even aside from the Body Horror, Harvey is often filmed in Extreme Close-Up, whether he's taking a piss or messily devouring shrimp.
- Elsewhere, we get some loving shots of wounds oozing pus, teeth falling out, food festering, fingers withering...
- Coralie Fargeat manages to make something as simple as a dirty martini unpleasant with this trope.
- Hatred Makes You Dumb: Elisabeth hates herself, which translates into Elisabeth and her clone Sue hating each other. This leads to them making some very poor, short-sighted decisions, such as Elisabeth refusing to quit the Substance despite knowing Sue will keep taking more and more time from her, and making messes to further spite and irritate Sue. Sue, in turn, doesn't seem to care that her life depends on Elisabeth staying alive and keeps drawing more stabilizers from her, which rapidly ages Elisabeth. And then she kills Elisabeth in an Unstoppable Rage, sealing her fate.
- Heartbeat Soundtrack: When Elisabeth injects Sue, the soundtrack focuses on Sue's heartbeat as it slows and fades, deepening the scene's emotional impact.
- The Hecate Sisters: Exaggerated at each stage of Elisabeth's transformation. She begins as the "mother": beautiful and accomplished, yet visibly older, once admired, and childless. From her, she creates Sue, the "maiden": a gorgeous, youthful Ms. Fanservice who possesses charm and vitality, yet mostly personality-free. When Sue misuses the Substance, she gives rise to Monstro Elisasue, a grotesque "crone" who craves people's acceptance and love.
- High-Pressure Blood: Exaggerated. During the finale, Monstro Elisasue's head explodes, spraying everyone near her with a geyser of blood. Then, a new head grows back. Then, her arm breaks off, and the resulting spray is strong enough to drench the entire studio audience to the back rows.
- Hollywood Mid-Life Crisis: Elisabeth becomes desperate to recapture her youth after turning 50 and getting fired from her job because of her age. Instead of coping and moving on, she takes a shady drug that allows her to live life once more as a hot 20-something-year-old.
- Homage Shot:
- The recurring motif of Elisabeth lying on the antiseptic bathroom floor with prominent stitches in her spine recalls The Human Centipede.
- In the ad for the Substance given to Elisabeth by a nurse on a USB flash drive, the effects are explained by a hand model holding two lumps of clay in each hand: one asymmetrical and imperfect, the other perfectly rounded sphere. The presentation of the two halves on open palms is nearly identical to the red pill/blue pill ultimatum given to Neo by Morpheus in The Matrix (1999).
- Sue's skin pulsing under her thigh, though it's probably a Nightmare Sequence, is to Brian Yuzna's Society, where the main character sees his alien sister's body pulsing in the same way.
- The lone remaining face crawls away from the mass of flesh that had been Monstro Elisasue and rests over Elisabeth Sparkle's Hollywood Walk star before dissolving into a smear of blood. Anyone who sees that and has also seen The Thing (1982) is going to remember the head detaching from the Norris-Thing and trying to crawl away.
- Hope Spot:
- After encountering another user of the Substance which inspires her to enjoy her life rather than rely on her other self, Elisabeth attempts to make a date with Fred, an old friend from school who met her before she took the Substance. Although Elisabeth tries to prepare herself for a good night out, her insecurities ultimately overwhelm her, as she's confronted by both Sue's body in the secret room and the billboard of Sue outside her penthouse. She doesn't go on the date at all, falling back into the self-destructive cycle of relying on Sue to feel good about herself.
- Later in the movie, it seems like Elisabeth is going to terminate the Substance treatment for good. While her original body has aged dramatically, she could at least stop degenerating further, and for a moment it seems like she destroyed Sue. But then Elisabeth changes her mind, Sue wakes up and is conscious simultaneous to Elisabeth, and things get really nasty from there...
- Horrible Hollywood: Hollywood is portrayed as a place that chews up and coldly spits out women as soon as they no longer measure up to the industry's insanely high standards of beauty. And everyone running the joint is a Dirty Old Man.
- Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: Sue starts to literally fall apart hours before the studio's New Year's Eve special due to her killing Elisabeth which thus deprives her of the Stabilizer needed to maintain her body, causing her to use the remaining Activator serum in hopes of generating a better body. It instead results in the horribly disfigured Monstro Elisasue's debut, destruction, and degeneration in front of the horrified studio's New Year's Eve audience and livestream.
- Horror Hates a Rulebreaker:
- The rules of The Substance are very clear: you must always switch bodies every seven days, no exceptions. Sue thinks she can cheat the system by taking extra injections from Elisabeth to prolong her time in control. She's wrong.
- It's also stated that the Activator can only be used once. Sue tries to break this rule as well, and it results in Monstro Elisasue.
- The Substance works exactly as advertised and there is nothing to suggest that one cannot use it indefinitely if you follow the rules. The problem is that the type of people vain enough to use The Substance are also the most likely to abuse it like Elisabeth/Sue.
- Hotter and Sexier: In-Universe. Pump It Up with Sue turns the relatively subdued and conventional Workout Fanservice of Sparkle Your Life with Elisabeth into something far more salacious, forgoing any kind of apparent value as an exercise program in favor of being pure T&A. Besides featuring more Stripperiffic leotards on the female performers, all of the choreography shown is borderline erotic and heavily emphasizes the chest, hips, and butt. We later learn (albeit in a Dream Sequence) that the gratuitous Male Gaze shots of the performers' rear ends are in fact actual camera angles the show is filmed from, with one camera in particular being used seemingly for the sole purpose of getting closeups of Sue's behind.
- I Warned You: The voice behind the Substance gives very clear warnings on how it works and emphasizes to the people using it that they are one and the same and need to use it responsibly. When Elisabeth/Sue doesn't follow the rules accordingly and calls in to complain after experiencing the side effects from their misuse, the voice keeps telling them that the substance is working as intended and the problem lies in how they're not following the instructions.
- Imagine Spot:
- When Monstro Elisasue enters the studio corridor, she sees a crowd of applauding crew members and people lined up against the wall congratulating and reassuring her she is where she belongs despite her disfigured appearance before the camera switches perspectives to show her walking down an actually empty hallway.
- After Elisabeth's face on a fleshy mass crawls on top of her Hollywood Walk of Fame star, she happily imagines the stars in the night sky turning into a spotlight and shower of golden sparkles as she recalls the crowd of people who were congratulating and applauding her as Monstro Elisasue before she dissolves into nothing but a bloody smear.
- I'm Melting!: Elisabeth's face after crawling away from the remains of Monstro Elisasue expires this way, on her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
- Impairment Shot:
- When Sue is first born and the camera takes her perspective, her sight is blurry, and the sound is muffled.
- The camera shows her perspective again when she's falling apart from the lack of stabilizer. She suffers similar effects, with additional static and people's speech slowing down.
- We also get to see Monstro Elisasue's perspective after she emerged from Sue, leading to the original reveal of Elisasue in the bathroom mirror.
- Inevitably Broken Rule: The Substance has a list of instructions that must be followed to the letter. However, this is a horror movie.
- Insistent Terminology: When on the phone with the representative of the company who produces The Substance, Elisabeth and Sue use the pronouns "she and her" to refer to each other. The representative reminds them multiple times that there's no "she," Sue and Elisabeth are one.
- Interrupted Intimacy: Sue has invited Troy for a one-night stand, and he's unzipping her suit when she gets a Deadly Nosebleed that signals that she needs to switch back. Sue runs to extract an additional dose of stabilizer fluid instead and resumes the act with Troy, but her guts spill from her back. Fortunately, that last part is just Elisabeth's Catapult Nightmare.
- It Only Works Once: The Substance itself. The instructions say you can only inject it once into your body and must dispose of the remainder after usage. For some reason, the vial with the rest gets tossed into a bathroom drawer and neither Elisabeth nor Sue bothers to get rid of it. Once Sue's body starts to degrade, she shoots up the leftover Substance into her body in hopes of making a better version of herself. Monstro Elisasue is the result.
- It's Always Spring: It's apparently set in Hollywood where it's always sunny during the day even, though the climax is set on New Year's Eve. However, the opening montage confusingly shows it snowing, lending to a confusion over the location.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Even though Elisabeth/Sue is made well-aware of the consequences of failing to respect the 7-day balance between selves, she starts stealing more and more time from Elisabeth to live longer as Sue, deforming Elisabeth in the process. Sue officially jumps off when she decides to extract as much fluid as possible from Elisabeth, unable to accept spending even one second as that version of herself. This decision, of course, doesn't go unpunished.
- Kick Them While They Are Down: After brutalizing Elisabeth in the bathroom, Sue kicks her across the living room and continues kicking her while Elisabeth lies helpless on the floor.
- Lipstick-and-Load Montage: Sue puts on bright red lipstick, a tight leather bodysuit, and high-heeled boots (all shot in slow-motion and close-ups) before going out to party.
- Locked in the Bathroom: Elisabeth locks herself inside the bathroom in an attempt at escaping the murderous Sue. It doesn't work, as Sue kicks the door open soon enough.
- Looks Worth Killing For: Sue is willing to kill Elisabeth to maintain her life as a beautiful starlet, not realizing this decision seals her fate.
- Losing Your Head: Once Monstro Elisasue's disguise falls off, and her face is revealed, an audience member decapitates her, only for a new head to grow in the old ones' place shortly afterwards.
- Loss of Identity: One interpretation of the Substance, stated by the elderly man whose "other self" introduced Elisabeth to the company, is that one begins to lose oneself. The "matrix" is steadily consumed, unable to feel like they still matter while their identity is devoured until there's nothing left but a decrepit shell.
- Madness Mantra: When Elisabeth discovers that her original body has degenerated even further after Sue abuses the 7-day limit a second time, she starts hitting her head occasionally while repeatedly telling herself (or Sue) to "stop it".
- Male Gaze: Being a movie about the objectification of women by showbiz and its horrific psychological consequences on them, there are unsurprisingly a lot of shots of women's rear ends, especially Sue's.
- Metaphorically True:
- Sue tells Harvey that she needs to take every other week off to tend to her sick mother.
- The nurse at the hospital slips Elisabeth the contact information for the Substance supplier with a note mentioning, "It changed my life." He didn't say it improved his life. Elisabeth will later put this note up on her fridge.
- Milestone Birthday Angst: Elisabeth turns 50 at the start of the story and she's not at all happy about it because of her deep-seated dread of growing older and losing her looks. Sure enough, her birthday is miserable as she overhears Harvey rant about her age on the phone and he fires her shortly after, justifying himself by saying that "at 50, it stops".
- Mirror Reveal: Elisabeth's "better version of herself" is first revealed when she looks at the mirror after transforming. Elisabeth's hunchback crone form and Monstro Elisasue are revealed the same way.
- Motifs: Eggs and chickens. The very first shot of the film is that of a chicken egg yolk duplicating itself after being injected with The Substance, Elisabeth usually wears an overcoat that's the same shade of yellow as egg yolks, and Harvey, addressing her dismissal from her job says, "at 50, it stops" without clarifying what he means when Elisabeth presses him. One explanation for his statement may be "a woman stops ovulating—releasing eggs". The birthing process after the Substance injection might be loosely compared to hatching as the new body pushes at and splits through the skin as if the older body was nothing but a shell, and Elisabeth binges on chicken and egg-related food when she starts to deteriorate and give up on life as herself. When going mad in the kitchen, she attacks a chicken like it's Sue, and whips eggs in a splattery frenzy while throwing eggs at the TV when infuriated by Sue's interview. Sue has a nightmare about pulling a chicken drumstick from her navel, Elisabeth's oldest form is visually likened to that of an eaten chicken carcass and the classic riddle "What came first: the chicken or the egg?" could be easily applied to Elisabeth and Sue's situation in the film. Elisabeth also "chickens out" twice in the film when she's unable to meet a friend for a date due to her insecurities and when she ultimately can't bring herself to terminate Sue because she still craves the fame and stardom Sue gets, and while the idiom isn't spoken in the film, the idea of Elisabeth no longer being "a spring chicken" seems relevant to the theme as well. Young women also being referred to as "chicks" may be another unsaid aspect of the symbolism.
- Mouthscreen: The camera is on Sue's mouth as she reveals her name to the casting directors (and the audience). It then zooms out into Sue watching multiple screens where that shot is played back repeatedly.
- Multi-Irised Eyes:
- One promotional poster for the film shows a close-up of an eye with three irises, while another shows Elisabeth with her right eye looking normal and her left eye with two irises.
- Played with when Elisabeth uses the Substance. A closeup of her eye shows a second eyeball appearing in her eye socket as she produces her younger clone, Sue. When Sue uses the Substance on herself, the same eye is shown again, but this time three irises appear in her eyeball, signifying the process going horribly wrong as Sue transforms into a horrific, fleshy grotesque.
- Never My Fault: Basically one of the Fatal Flaw of Elisabeth/Sue, as they can't accept responsibility for their actions in how they use the Substance. The man on the phone states no one's forcing them to keep using it, and that the negative effects they experience are because they don't take the Substance as intended, leading to all the consequences that follow.
- Nice Guy: Out of all the scummy, shallow, and misogynistic men that Elisabeth/Sue faces throughout the film, Elisabeth's childhood friend Fred is the only man in the film who's genuinely kindhearted and still finds Elisabeth beautiful no matter what, even showing concern for her well-being through his texts when she fails to show up for their date. Unfortunately, Elisabeth's self-loathing is so great that she can't accept his admiration or find the courage to go on a date with him, standing him up due to her profound insecurities and thus likely shutting out the one person who might've pulled her back and changed her trajectory.
- Nice, Mean, and In-Between: Elisabeth's various selves. Elisabeth is the In-Between, a polite and mild-mannered person who's nevertheless clearly closed off from people. Sue is the Mean, due to engaging in toxic diva behavior and violently murdering Elisabeth. The Nice is Monstro Elisasue, a harmless creature who speaks from the heart when she says how glad she is that people came to see her, begs them not to be afraid, and remains harmless even as she's treated with cruelty.
- No Antagonist: There's no actual main villain. Harvey could technically be considered one, whose flimsy reasons for firing Elisabeth in the first place provided the impetus to her downward spiral but he's overall more a Jerkass than anything, showing how people like him find, chew up, and spit out talent in Hollywood when it no longer benefits them. However, the antagonistic force that actually drives the plot is none other than Elisabeth's own self-hatred, because if she didn't loathe herself and crave the spotlight, there'd be no plot at all. An argument could be made for the supplier of the Substance, but he never outright lies to Elisabeth or the audience, and we're given no reason to believe it doesn't work when the instructions are followed. There is an implication that The Substance is only given to users who eventually break the rules out of vanity and turn into prematurely-aged freaks.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Downplayed.
- Although Harvey is clearly named after the disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, his character (a colorful, glad-handing phony) bears little resemblance to the gruff, bullying Weinstein, aside from his misogyny.
- Elisabeth draws inspiration from Jane Fonda, who had her leading lady prime years during the 1960s, the '70s, and had a last hurrah of sorts doing aerobics videos during the '80s. The resemblance ends there though. Fonda has since stated in numerous interviews that she's enjoying life in her old age more than she ever did when she was younger, finding new hobbies to enjoy, free of the pressure to look perfect for the camera, and sometimes taking on character roles when they interest her. Thanks to her extensive filmography and consistent popularity, she's well off to the point that she can pick and choose which of those character roles she wants to play. Furthermore, she's a mishmash of various White Dwarf Starlets through the ages who have had breakdowns over their aging and fading into irrelevance.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: When Sue realizes Elisabeth planned to terminate her, she violently beats her, smashes her face into the mirror, kicks her through a glass table, and then just straight kicks her to death without saying a word to her.
- No Name Given: The young man who first prompts Elisabeth to use the Substance, and whose older self she later encounters at the diner, is only ever identified as Candidate 207, from the locker shown at the drop-off point. We never learn the actual name(s) of the young nurse/old man.
- Normie Dates a Celebrity: Subverted. Elisabeth, the White-Dwarf Starlet, comes close to going on a date with regular guy Fred, a high school classmate of hers, but Sue exacerbates Elisabeth's insecurities about her appearance, causing her to give up on the date at the last minute.
- Not Using the "Z" Word: Sue is a clone of Elisabeth since she was created from her DNA, but the word "clone" is never used in the movie; Sue is only ever said to be "the other self".
- Obligatory Earpiece Touch: During her appearance on a late-night show, the host touches his earpiece, signaling news from the control room before announcing Sue will host the upcoming New Year's Eve show.
- One-Eyed Shot:
- There are several shots of Elisabeth's eye while she "gives birth" to Sue, showing the gradual creation of another eye in the same socket.
- There's a shot of Sue's eye when she looks at herself in the mirror after being created, with it partially shining in the color of the Substance for a few moments.
- The shots from the "birth" of Sue are repeated in horrifying ways during the "birth" of Monstro Elisasue.
- One-Person Birthday Party: Elisabeth celebrates her 50th birthday by drinking alone at a bar. She's shown to only get a handful of quick "happy birthday"s from her co-workers before getting fired, which is indicative of her lack of friends to spend what should be a joyful occasion with.
- Only One Name: Elisabeth Sparkle's upgraded alter-ego simply goes by Sue, no last name necessary. Actually, no one in the film has a surname except Elisabeth, and her last name seems chosen rather than given.
- "Open!" Says Me: Sue kicks open the door to the bathroom where Elisabeth is trying to hide from her.
- Out of Job, Into the Plot: Elisabeth loses her job as an aerobics show host shortly after the start of the movie. Then she gets into a car crash, learns about the titular Substance from a nurse, and acquires it to get back her job and the limelight that comes with it back.
- Overdrawn at the Blood Bank: Monstro Elisasue's injuries bathe the entire studio audience, stage, and hallway in way more blood than what her body could contain. It implies that her malfunctioning cell division is resupplying her with more blood just as fast as she's bleeding out.
- Painful Transformation: Justified. After taking the activation serum, Elisabeth screams in agony on the bathroom floor as her back violently tears open for the clone to emerge.
- Paper Destruction of Anger: In a moment of frustration, Elisabeth crumples the newspaper in anger after seeing an advertisement for her replacement.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Parodied. How Monstro Elisasue with a cutout of Elisabeth's face glued to her head is able to pass as Sue to a stage crewmember without him noticing anything wrong is anyone's guess; the disguise manages to hold until the cutout falls off, even after Elisasue speaks to the audience with a distinct Heavy Voice.
- Pimped-Out Dress: Sue's outfit for her New Year's Eve special is an absolutely gorgeous blue ball gown that fits her like a glove. Even after transmuting into Monstro Elisasue, she still insists on wearing it.
- P.O.V. Cam:
- The camera shifts to a first-person perspective as Sue and later Monstro Elisasue rise from the bathroom floor, gazing into the mirror to discover their new identities.
- When Oliver comes knocking to ask Sue out on a date, we see him from the perspective of Elisabeth, who's watching him through her door's peephole.
- Pretty Boy:
- The young, handsome-looking medical assistant who's later revealed to be the alter ego of an extremely old man Elisabeth meets in a café.
- One of Sue's hookups, Troy.
- Produce Pelting: A furious Elisabeth chucks raw eggs at her TV screen and apartment window while watching Sue insult her and her show during a televised interview on said screen.
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
- When the man behind The Substance narrates how it works, he puts particular emphasis on one detail that the user should not forget.Narrator: The one and only thing not to forget. You are one. You can't escape from yourself.
- Elisabeth mutters "You. Need. To…" in time to her banging her head against the shower floor. The scene then immediately cuts to Sue screaming the rest of the sentence in a similar cadence in the living room:Sue: CON-TROL! YOUR-SELF!
- When the man behind The Substance narrates how it works, he puts particular emphasis on one detail that the user should not forget.
- Rapid Aging: You abuse the seven-day rule to extend your active time as the younger self, and your original self starts to decay. Sue refuses to switch back for three months. When forced to switch back to Elisabeth, she's aged from 50 to 100+ years in that time.
- Rasputinian Death: Elisabeth technically dies four times thanks to misusing the Substance and inhabiting multiple clone bodies. Her original body gets beaten and kicked to death by Sue. Sue then starts falling apart and injects herself with the remainder of the Substance in a desperate move to create another improved version of herself, dying when the malformed Monstro Elisasue tears out of her back. Monstro Elisasue is decapitated by an audience member at the New Year's Eve show, but still survives long enough to run away and explode on the streets. Elisabeth ends up spending her last minutes as a bloody gelatinous mess before dissolving into nothing.
- Riddle for the Ages: It's never revealed who produces the Substance, how they produce it, or how they get their funding, as they don't even seem to charge their clients. The Representative whom Elisabeth/Sue calls is never seen, and he's apparently available for questions at all times of the day and night. Their pick-up location is a random back alley built into a dilapidated building, and no one is ever shown entering or leaving it except for Elisabeth.
- Ridiculously Fast Construction: Sue builds a room for hiding Elisabeth's body in just three days. Renovations like that would realistically take several weeks at a minimum.
- Room Full of Crazy: As Sue embarks on a new cycle after Elisabeth goes on a messy French cuisine binge, she enters a chaotic kitchen and living room littered with tons of leftover food and unwashed dishes along with newspapers plastered on the windows and television screen, visually representing Elisabeth's descent into madness.
- Rule of Symbolism:
- Elisabeth's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame initially looks perfect. But the star itself becomes a focus for multiple layers of symbolism. The first is when an autumn leaf blows over it, a reminder that all things living and vibrant will at some point change and fade. People walk over it constantly without even being aware of it being there, a reminder that a formerly young starlet will be more and more forgotten as time goes by. Cracks begin to appear in the star itself, another reminder of physical decay over time. Finally, some tomato ketchup is spilled and smudged on it before being scrubbed off, a signal of the Body Horror and eventual deaths to come.
- The scene where Harvey fires Elisabeth while messily eating shrimp in a restaurant could represent how elite or high-ranking people in the industry mindlessly chew up and spit out people whom they consider inferior or beneath them once they view them as no longer being useful or past their prime, aka "nearing their expiration date". The fact that flies are buzzing around in the swanky-looking restaurant also alludes to this being the putrid reality of Hollywood showbiz being covered up by a glamorous facade to lure more people into working in the entertainment industry, similar to the scene where workers rip away a beautiful billboard depicting Elisabeth in a toothpaste advertisement to reveal the dirty and rusty surface underneath. The shrimp also gets to wiggle in a certain... flaccid way when waved in Harvey's hand, emphasizing the aspect of repulsive masculinity to his character.
- On the footpath to the Substance's drop boxes is a broken-down and abandoned Porsche sports car, a metaphor for Elisabeth herself, who was once a high-performance starlet but is now old and discarded.
- Many scenes feature things being thrown in the trash by multiple characters, an allusion to beautiful young starlets enjoying their 15 minutes of fame while they still have their good looks, but will inevitably be discarded and treated as disposable.
- The New Year's Eve audience, including Harvey, getting drenched in Monstro Elisasue's blood can be a Literal Metaphor for how Elisabeth's blood is on their hands due to most of them representing (or in Harvey's case, being directly responsible for) the toxicity of Hollywood that caused Elisabeth's low self-esteem, which drove her to use the Substance in the first place.
S–Y
- Scare Chord:
- When Elisabeth reaches for the note that Sue's fling left her, the sudden sight of her super-aged finger (the consequence of Sue taking an extra shot of stabilizer from her) is coupled with the screech of a violin.
- The first sight of The Grotesque Monstro Elisasue is coupled with a brief burst of harsh music.
- Schmuck Bait: The Substance in general is this.
- Although it works exactly as advertised so long as the rules are followed, in practice, recipients end up abusing the Substance to stay as their younger self for as long as they possibly can, causing severe damage to their older selves as they do so. After all, if they were the sort of person who were comfortable with their age, they probably wouldn't be taking the Substance in the first place.
- Despite the instruction labels stating the Activator is only for a one-time use and any excess should be thrown away, the amount provided is more than enough for at least two doses. Elisabeth still kept the excess amount anyway. Near the climax, a deteriorating Sue without Elisabeth to provide her Stabilizer remembers the remaining Activator and comes up with an idea to become the matrix for an even better version of herself. She manages to scramble home and uses the remaining Substance despite also remembering the warning. It only gets worse from there.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
- Oliver, Elisabeth's neighbor, opens his door right after Elisabeth does, clearly expecting Sue instead of the extremely aged and crone-like Elisabeth who snarls "FUCK OFF!" at him, which causes him to stumble back into his apartment in fright.
- Sue's completely naked boyfriend scrams the moment an extremely withered and aged Elisabeth screams at him to Get Out! and leave her alone from inside the locked bathroom. He doesn't even pause to put on his clothes after gathering up his things.
- Secret Room: Sue discovers an unused space behind the bathroom, which is then used to hide her and Elisabeth's bodies by converting a section of wall into a hidden door.
- Senior Creep: Harvey and the network shareholders are a group of creepy, misogynistic old men who are openly lecherous towards younger women.
- Serendipitous Symphony: Construction sounds segue into the exercise music of Sparkle Your Life.
- Shaking the Rump: Sue and her colleagues shake their behinds on camera as part of her workout routine.
- Shout-Out:
- Elisabeth's overuse and abuse of the Substance to live a carefree, hedonistic life that winds up affecting her real form is a Whole-Plot Reference to The Picture of Dorian Gray.
- The plot also invokes the black comedy Death Becomes Her, about an aging Hollywood starlet who uses a potion to stay young forever. Interestingly, the line "Take care of yourself" appears in both films.
- Several to The Shining: the bathroom in which Elisabeth overhears Harvey is colored red and white and shot from a similar angle, the corridor at the TV studios has geometric patterned carpeting that is very similar to that in the Overlook Hotel's, and in the ending, Monstro Elisasue drenches everything in her own bloody flood. There's also a Homage Shot of the scene in which Jack is trapped in the meat freezer when Elisabeth yells at Diego to go away.
- During a phone call, Harvey brutally mocks Elisabeth's age by saying she must have won her Oscar for King Kong (1933).
- The humorous juxtaposition of Sue doing renovations with the appropriate tools and protection while still wearing a crop-top and booty shorts recalls the music video to Benny Benassi's Electro House classic "Satisfaction." Sue's first appearance on her new show recalls another notorious music video, Eric Prydz's "Call On Me", set at an aerobic class.
- A blink-and-you'll-miss-it one, but on top of everything else that goes wrong on her birthday, Elisabeth gets "a black fly in her chardonnay," which is a lyric from Alanis Morissette's song "Ironic."
- When Sue begins breaking down towards the end, she loses her teeth, fingernails, and an ear in almost the same manner as Seth in The Fly (1986), a reference that pairs with the earlier focus on a fly.
- Several to Videodrome: Sue ends up pulling something out of her abdomen where her navel is, much like the film's protagonist, and the extreme close-up on Sue's mouth appearing on the Ominous Multiple Screens TV set at Harvey's office also harkens back to the scene in Videodrome in which Max hallucinates making out with Nicki, who appears through a pulsating, living television, with her lips taking over the screen.
- There are also quite a few homages to Peter Jackson's Braindead, from the comical amount of blood spray during the finale to even the design of Monstro Elisasue bearing lots of similarity to some of the more monstrous zombies in that film, like the baby and the spine monster. Elisabeth's face as some sort of messy mini monster also brings to mind the intestine monster.
- Monstro Elisasue's deformity and the liquescent manner in which she breaks apart when hit recall Emil's death in RoboCop (1987).
- Bernard Herrmann's "Scene D'amour" from Vertigo can be heard during the scene where Monstro Elisasue is "getting ready" in front of the mirror for her New Year's Eve Show.
- The New Year's Eve special leading up to The Reveal of Monstro Elisasue to the audience uses "Also Sprach Zarathustra".
- The climax features an audience getting sprayed with tons and tons and TONS of cheesy blood.
- There are abstract, hallucinatory images between each body switch — similar to Infinity Pool's own abstract shots when those characters switch bodies.
- How Monstro Elisasue gets treated by the crowd is a dead ringer for how The Elephant Man was often treated. She has to run away from the crowd and is physically attacked by one of the crowd members. And she tries pleading that she is "still Sue" and "still Elisabeth", much like how the Elephant Man tried to plead "I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I... am... a... man!"
- The bloodbath at the end of the New Year's Eve party is a recreation of the prom massacre from Carrie (1976), complete with the light flashing on Monstro Elisasue's face and the blood spattering in a way that recalls the pig's blood.
- The Substance's activator is a bright greenish liquid that needs to be injected with a syringe, not unlike the serum from Re-Animator.
- The Substance = The Stuff. A metaphor for addiction with the most generic name possible, that seemingly comes out of nowhere, gets commercially sold in a slick package, makes people always want more of it, and deforms them in grotesque ways.
- Elisasue looks like a Splicer that stepped right out from Rapture post-New Year's Eve, hideous mutations, fancy dress, mask and all. Created by the misuse of a mutagenic substance that promotes stem cell growth, even.]]
- The film has a few similarities with the obscure satirical body horror film Body Melt. It's about vitamin supplements sold at a spa/health center, promising to make one's life better but that end up horribly deforming and killing the human guinea pigs subjected to them. There's also an early shot of a syringe full of a neon-green liquid being injected into someone.
- The nightmare where Sue's catsuit is unzipped and her organs spill out from her back strongly resembles Tetsuo's in AKIRA, where he falls to the ground and hallucinates his guts falling out.
- Monstro Elisasue bears more than a passing resemblance to a G-Mutator from Resident Evil 2 from the bloated, bumpy head, stretched features, and uneven limbs to the vomiting of body parts. She also has many elements from the game's main boss, William Birkin, starting from suffering a self-inflicted mutation due to an injection made to prevent death, keeping a vestigial face somewhere around their body, regrowing body parts after suffering major physical trauma, and a notorious amount of extra eyes all over their bodies.
- Shower of Angst: Elisabeth gets in the shower after the upsetting discovery of her aged finger. Later she curls up in the shower after Sue takes enough stabilizer from her to drastically age half her body. There's an added visual metaphor for her distress in how the shower seems to be completely enclosed in tiled walls for both scenes, whereas the door is visibly there in other, less angsty shower scenes.
- Showing Off the New Body: After Sue's transformation, she revels in her youthful appearance, striking poses in front of the mirror with a mix of confidence and vanity.
- Show Within a Show: Elisabeth hosts an aerobics show called Sparkle Your Life with Elisabeth, then, as Sue, she hosts Pump It Up with Sue. There's also the talk show (called simply The Show) where Sue is interviewed, and the New Year's Eve show Sue spends the latter part of the movie getting ready for.
- Shrine to Self: The biggest early signs of Elisabeth's vanity and self-absorption are the framed giant picture of herself in her living room and the placement of her awards and other memorabilia related to her career on a table by the window (instead of a shelf against the wall which would have been more subtle).
- Silence Is Golden: There are plenty of long sequences in this film without dialogue, and a high proportion of the film's storytelling is purely visual, with dialogue often being minimal.
- Sleek High-Rise Apartment: Elisabeth is a former movie star boasting enough wealth to live in a stylish high-rise apartment with a window that takes up an entire wall and gives her a panoramic view of Los Angeles.
- Snow Globe of Innocence: Elisabeth contemplates a snow globe dedicated to herself as she reminisces about the peak of her career. She then throws it at her portrait in a rage, because those days are past. The golden sparkles come back in the final scene when Elisabeth imagines them raining down from heaven.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: Electronic music is known for its energetic tone, but when coupled with the bizarre imagery as shown in the trailers, it creates the opposite feeling.
- Spiritual Antithesis: To Coralie Fargeat's previous film Revenge (2017). Both are feminist horror films about violence being done to women, but while that was a fairly humorless and straightforward revenge film in which the violence is done by men and the protagonist is a young woman whose youthful beauty makes her a target of rape, this is a Body Horror film with strong Black Comedy elements in which the violence is self-inflicted and the protagonist is an older woman confronted by the pressures of aging in the entertainment industry.
- Splash of Color: Title variant. One poster, depicting Elisabeth's Walk of Fame star cracked and bloodied, shows the movie's title, but the first S, U, and E in "Substance" are colored red, spelling "Sue".
- Stargazing Scene: The final remains of Elisabeth, functionally framed as Elisabeth herself reborn, spend the last moments looking at the starry night sky and imagining golden sparkles raining down.
- Stealth Pun: Elisabeth winds up misusing the Substance processes by taking excess stabilizer as Sue and disrupting the balance and harming her older body, and the Substance activator itself is misused late in the film. In other words, Substance abuse.
- Stood Up: Elisabeth calls Fred and sets a date with him to lift her spirits after waking up with an aged finger due to Sue taking up more than her allotted time. While Elisabeth gets ready for the date, she tries and fails multiple times to leave the mirror and go out, but her insecurities about her appearance get the better of her and she ends up staying home and ghosting Fred.
- Surprise Car Crash: Elisabeth calmly drives home after getting fired. She gets distracted by the sight of a billboard ad of hers getting torn down, but things remain quiet right until a moment later when a car suddenly crashes into hers because she wasn't looking.
- Symbolic Mutilation: The Movie. The film follows Elisabeth's downward spiral as she grows more and more disgusted by her age and outward appearance. Her alter ego Sue can only exist by sapping fluids directly from Elisabeth's spine and any misuse of this procedure results in permanent disfigurement to the original body. As Elisabeth grows more reliant on Sue she allows herself to become increasingly grotesque, manifesting her insecurities about her own body in extremely disturbing ways. This comes to its peak when Sue starts to destabilize on the night of her New Year's Eve hosting gig. In an act of desperation, she repeats the activation procedure in hopes that it will create a good-as-new replica of Sue and save her looks for the broadcast. This of course turns her into the most monstrous and repulsive version of herself, Monstro Elisasue. Her vanity, fueled by the pressure of the network for her to appear beautiful, is at its highest level of intensity and so too is her level of deformity.
- Tantrum Throwing: Elisabeth, in a rage, throws a snow globe at a portrait of her younger self, smashing and splashing its contents over it.
- Teratoma Monster: Monstro Elisasue, created when Sue attempts to use the single-use Substance for the second time, is a grotesque mass of body parts, including extra limbs, at least one errant eye, and a second face plastered on her back. Interestingly, for all her outward monstrosity, Elisasue is extremely gentle and timid, being the kindest among the versions of the main character.
- These Hands Have Killed: Following the act of killing Elisabeth, Sue is consumed by remorse, staring in horror at her bloodied hands, grappling with the weight of her actions.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: Elisabeth goes to a cafe where she orders a mocha latte. She runs into the older version of the nurse who gave her the contacts for the Substance. Meeting him disturbs her so much that she rushes off, leaving the mocha latte untouched.
- Time-Compression Montage: The opening montage shows Elisabeth's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in a time-lapse as it degrades over the years.
- Time Skip: The third act jumps forward three months, close to New Year's Eve.
- Toilet Horror: Elisabeth's bathroom is the setting for some of the movie's most gruesome (yet important) scenes, whether it's Elisabeth painfully birthing Sue out of her back, Sue repeatedly slamming Elisabeth against the mirror until she's a bloody pulp, or Sue creating the malformed Monstro Elisasue in desperation as she falls apart.
- The Tooth Hurts: One of the first signs that Sue is "dying". And she pulls a few of them out for good measure too.
- Trash of the Titans: Sue's parties and one-night stands tend to leave a mess for Elisabeth to eventually clean up, while Elisabeth leaves behind half-eaten food and unwashed dishes that Sue has to take care of when the former's self-loathing increases. At the height of her self-destructive rage, Elisabeth creates an even bigger disaster than Sue's and her own previous messes combined, trashing her apartment with even bigger piles of leftover food and unwashed dishes from a French cuisine cooking and eating binge and covering up her apartment window and TV with stuck-on newspapers so she won't have to see Sue on the billboard and TV screen.
- Trauma Conga Line: Elisabeth gets hit hard with this trope at the beginning of the film. She overhears her boss insulting her age and planning to fire her for it in the washroom, gets fired later during lunch with said boss at a fancy restaurant, and then gets into a car accident while driving back from the restaurant. Oh, and did we mention this all happened on her 50th birthday?
- Troubled Fetal Position: Elisabeth curls up while lying in the shower after waking up severely aged and watching Sue badmouth her on a talk show.
- Uncertain Doom: Not for Elisabeth herself, but it's implied everyone who uses The Substance will wind up sharing Elisabeth's ultimate fate — when she runs into an elderly man at a café, it's revealed that he's the nurse who gave her the recommendation of The Substance, and given his appearance and him ominously asking Elisabeth if her younger counterpart has already begun "eating away at" her, he's likely been prematurely aged from Substance abuse.
- Unexpectedly Abandoned: Sue comes to the studio for another day of filming "Pump It Up", only to find the set mostly abandoned, with only a technician taking things down. Then someone else comes and tells Sue that Harvey wants to see her immediately, making Sue think she's about to be fired. Harvey reveals he's cancelled her show, but it's so she can focus on preparing to host the New Year's Eve show, which is a big opportunity for her (though the way Harvey goes about it comes off as not giving her a choice).
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Elisabeth was already on a downward spiral, but what really kicks it off and has her desperate to use the Substance is when her former boss disparages her looks and age, which fuels Elisabeth's abuse of the Substance… with horrible consequences.
- Verbal Backspace: The nurse aiding Elisabeth after her car crash performs a last-second exam on her back and spine, from which he concludes her to be a "good candidate." When Elisabeth asks for clarification, he waves it off and says that she's "good to go."
- Visual Title Drop: The title is first shown when Elisabeth finds a USB stick with "THE SUBSTANCE" written on it.
- Vomit Discretion Shot: Elisabeth spends the night of her 50th birthday drinking so much that she vomits when she gets home, but all that's seen of that is her hunched over the toilet in a long shot.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Sue vomits a green liquid resembling the Substance itself all over the bathroom floor shortly after being created (it's likely part of the process of her creation, since nothing more is made of it). It's very sudden and the camera doesn't shy away from it. Monstro Elisasue also ends up coughing up a boob from one of her mouths during the New Year's Eve show in full view of the camera (and the in-universe audience as well).
- Weather Dissonance: One shot in the opening montage shows Elisabeth's star on the Walk of Fame covered by snowfall. A poignant image, yes, but given that the Walk of Fame is located in Los Angeles, there's practically no chance it would ever be covered in snow.
- What a Drag: Elisabeth drags Sue by her foot while running to the living room to inject her with the termination serum. Sue bangs her head on the steps on the way.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The film largely seems to take place in real-world Hollywood, California, given the sunny weather, palm trees, and stars on a Walk of Fame. However, there are other details that, along with the time period, confuse the issue:
- In the opening montage, a thick layer of snow covers Elisabeth Sparkle's star. It doesn't snow in Hollywood.
- The Substance's phone number has what is in reality a Southern California area code, but when Elisabeth calls it, the ringtone is European.
- Despite its American area code and drop box location, the decimal points used on the Substance's medical devices are commas instead of periods, as they would be in America.
- The network television New Year's Eve show features topless dancers, something that is against American broadcasting regulations.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The story is basically a modern-day take on Jekyll & Hyde (a morally dubious, but sympathetic individual uses a dangerous chemical to transform themselves into an entity that allows them to live out their vices before inevitably succumbing to their own self-destructive hubris), with some not-so-subtle commentary on Hollywood and the beauty industry mixed in.
- Wink "Ding!": The first time Sue films Pump It Up, she winks at the camera both at the start and end, with a dinging sound accompanying the act in both instances.
- With Great Power Comes Great Perks: You can't really blame Sue for wanting to spend so much time in her body, as her life is the stuff of dreams. She becomes an A-list celebrity practically overnight, constantly does magazine shoots and TV interviews, and of course is asked to host a major New Year's Eve special.
- Womb Horror: Elisabeth gives birth to the "better version of herself", except it grows rapidly into an adult while inside her and then bursts out of her back. The process is excruciatingly painful for Elisabeth.
- Workout Fanservice: Sue's workout show is gratuitous with cheesecake shots, and Harvey cast Sue specifically because of how hot she is. Elisabeth's predecessor's show was far more sedate in this regard. It's Played With in that the fanservice quickly becomes repetitive and even alien from the way it is filmed and framed, and it is NOT played for fanservice once the Body Horror settles in.
- Wrong Bathroom Incident: While at the studio, Elisabeth sees that the women's bathroom is out of order, so she goes into the men's bathroom and quickly enters a stall. Unfortunately, Harvey comes in shortly and he doesn't realize Elisabeth is there, so she has to listen to him spouting disdain on the phone about her.
- You Are Number Six: When Elisabeth initially calls the Substance Representative with regards to her Substance abuse, he refuses to acknowledge her until she identifies herself as "Number 503".
- Younger and Hipper:
- Harvey fires Elisabeth from her series explicitly because he deems her too old to be found desirable by her audience, with the job listing for her replacement calling for someone "youthful, vivacious, and high energy". Naturally, when Sue takes over the show, it is transformed from a fairly standard exercise program into something far more salacious and exploitative; featuring more sexualized costumes and choreography, gratuitous closeups of the performers' bodies, and intense house music in the place of the original series' upbeat techno funk soundtrack.
- The entire concept of the Substance is built around this trope: preying on people's insecurities about aging into obsolescence by offering them an opportunity to temporarily live as a younger, more desirable version of themselves.
- Your Head A-Splode: A New Year's Eve show audience member bludgeons the extremely fragile and destabilized Monstro Elisasue in the face, which bursts into blood and not long after another mutated head grows in its place.
- Your Makeup Is Running: After coming back home from a night of boozing, Elisabeth splashes her face with water, resulting in her makeup running as though she's been crying. The sight of it in the mirror probably doesn't help how crappy she already feels about her looks.
"People are gonna love that."