From David Lynch to Stanley Kubrick: The movies referenced within ‘The Substance’
Coralie Fargeat’s latest film, The Substance, has taken cinema by storm over the past few months, shocking even the most well-acquainted body horror aficionados with its no holds barred approach to gore and grotesqueness. Using satire and stomach-turning imagery to explore themes of female ageing and Hollywood’s treatment of women, the film is equally as entertaining and fun as it is terrifying and poignant.
The film follows Demi Moore’s Elisabeth Sparkle, an award-winning actor who finds her career fading. As a result, she decides to try a mysterious drug that will spawn a younger, more attractive version of herself. Margaret Qualley’s Sue emerges, filling her place as the newest, hottest face in the industry. Naturally, Elisabeth runs into various issues when using The Substance, resulting in her grotesque transformation into a decaying and horrifying entity. ‘Monstro Elisasue’ emerges as the final stage of her metamorphosis, an unrecognisable figure with body parts in all of the wrong places.
Fargeat pays homage to many films within The Substance, some of which are considerably more obvious than others. While some film lovers have excitedly noted the cinematic nods on display, others have labelled the movie as simply too referential for its own good. It’s a question that will certainly cause plenty of debate as more and more people experience a dose of The Substance for themselves.
There are so many films that clearly inspired The Substance and helped to shape it into an expansive and brilliant piece of cinema. The theme of doppelgangers, physical transformation, and desire driving someone to destruction mirrors Black Swan, for example, while many other film references are considerably more overt and can be compared shot-for-shot. Yet, it is apt that a film about Hollywood would feature many meta cinematic references, directly attaching itself to a lineage of classic movies within such a complex industry.
Which movies are referenced in The Substance?
Videodrome (David Cronenberg 1983)
Of course, you can’t make a body horror movie without David Cronenberg’s influence lingering in the back of your mind. Yet, in The Substance, Fargeat makes various direct references to some of his movies, like the close-up shot of Sue’s lips on a TV screen mirroring a similar sequence in Videodrome.
The body horror movie starred Debbie Harry as Nicki Brand, a celebrity presenter who often appears on television screens throughout the film. The fact that Videodrome explores themes of celebrity and female presentation in media, with Nicki becoming an alluring, somewhat unattainable figure, reflects Sue’s rise to popularity as a fitness show presenter.
The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986)
Then there’s The Fly, which follows a man who begins to mutate into a fly after a science experiment goes wrong. The film starred Jeff Goldblum as Seth, and you can certainly see the parallels in his character’s horrifying and tragic transformation with Elisabeth’s.
In The Substance, Elisabeth’s metamorphosis is gradual, beginning with a blackened, decaying finger, before she ends up with broken legs and the loss of her long hair. Eventually, she becomes unrecognisable and disgusting. The same thing happens to Seth, with his humanity fading until he turns into a monster.
The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980)
Additionally, there are clear links between David Lynch’s The Elephant Man and the final act of The Substance, in which a deformed Elisabeth – now Monstro Elisasue – appears on stage, much to the horror of those in the audience. Like Lynch’s film, we also get similar shots from the perspective of Monstro Elisasue, who also hides their face like John Merrick and even bears somewhat of a visual similarity due to the growths on both characters’ faces.
It appears as though Fargeat references the treatment of Merrick as a parallel to the way that ageing women are often treated as grotesque-looking beings rather than humans with innate worth, shunned by the press and (literally, in the case of The Substance) torn apart.
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
Lynch often deals in themes of doppelgangers and mirrored identities, such as within Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, and it is clear that Fargeat drew inspiration from these films, too. This is a theme that is also relevant in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, which is more subtly referenced in The Substance.
The piece ‘The Nightmare and Dawn’ from Hitchcock’s classic film plays when Monstro Elisasue puts an earring in while looking at herself in the mirror, which reflects a similar sequence featuring Judy.
The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
Fargeat also pays homage to another master, Stanley Kubrick. Most notably, there are various nods to The Shining, such as the red bathroom and the patterned carpet in the long corridor that Elisabeth and Sue often walk down. These references force us to draw connections between the themes of violent descent and instability found in The Shining and The Substance.
Both Elisabeth and Jack Torrance transform into unrecognisable characters over the course of each film, which Fargeat cleverly parallels. There is also a reference to Jack knocking on the bathroom door when Elisabeth violently bangs on it in the final act.
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
That’s not the only Kubrick film The Substance references, though. How could we forget the inclusion of ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’, famously used in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the addition of a similar travelling light sequence when Elisabeth takes The Substance?
The clinical white rooms that the characters spend lots of time in are also reminiscent of the room at the end of Kubrick’s epic. We can even draw parallels to the stage sequence in A Clockwork Orange to the one near the end of Fargeat’s film.
Alien: Covenant (Ridley Scott, 2017)
Ridley Scott’s Alien: Covenant came as the sequel to Prometheus, both of which were successful instalments in the Alien franchise. In Alien: Covenant, we see a Xenomorph burst out the back of a character. Fargeat takes an incredibly similar approach when depicting Sue’s emergence from Elisabeth’s back in The Substance.
Both scenes are incredibly gory and uncomfortable to watch, and it is interesting to see how Fargeat uses an idea already executed well in Ridley’s film without making it feel like a lazy and derivative choice. Having Sue emerge from Elisabeth’s back rather than her stomach or vagina, for example, gives her less of a daughterly quality and instead affirms that Sue is one and the same with Elisabeth, more like a conjoined twin that has been gruesomely separated.
