27 Movies to Watch if You Loved ‘The Substance’ (2024)
“Have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself?”
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The Substance is an exciting new movie that is sure to be endlessly discussed by horror fans and movie lovers of all genres. Written, directed and co-produced by French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat, The Substance is about an aging star’s desperation to be seen as beautiful. Told through the vehicle of bloody, stomach-turning body horror, The Substance is not for squeamish viewers.
This list catalogs (mostly horror) films that deal with the same topics as The Substance or have a similar feel. The movies are categorized by how they relate to The Substance, whether that’s a similar aesthetic, the filmmaker or the topics addressed.
Table of Contents
The Substance (2024) detailed plot summary:
Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is a well-known celebrity and the star of a TV aerobics show who is unceremoniously fired on her 50th birthday by her misogynistic boss, aptly named Harvey (Dennis Quaid). Distressed about her career, Elisabeth gets into a car accident and is treated by a nurse who discreetly informs her about a black market drug called The Substance. The drug promises users a younger, more beautiful version of themselves.
Spoilers ahead: stop reading this plot summary here if you have not yet seen The Substance.
Elisabeth orders the drug and ventures into a derelict alleyway where she is forced to literally crawl through trash in order to retrieve it from a mailbox. At home, she injects herself with the serum and births a new form of herself out of her back. When one body is conscious, the other body is unconscious and according to the serum’s instructions, each form has strictly seven days on and seven days off.
The new body (Margaret Qualley) auditions for Elisabeth’s old job using the name Sue and is quickly hired by her old boss. She enjoys the favor bestowed upon the young and beautiful in Hollywood and begins to resent sharing her time with Elisabeth. Meanwhile, Elisabeth becomes despondent as Sue proves her fears of aging to be true. She is unable to even go on a date with an adoring fan because of her fears about what it means that she no longer lives up to cultural beauty standards as she once did (and Sue currently does).
When Sue breaks the rules by staying “on” too long, Elisabeth wakes to irreversible damage to her body. As Sue increasingly abuses the drug, Elisabeth considers quitting The Substance, but is now nearly disabled which makes her even more reluctant to lose Sue. Instead, Elisabeth binge eats, which later affects Sue. The Substance doesn’t allow viewers to see how much of a consciousness Elisabeth and Sue share. It simply insists they are one, and as one, what is done to one form has consequences for the other.
When Elisabeth finally decides to stop using The Substance, she begins to terminate Sue but changes her mind before fully injecting her with the termination serum. This ends the connection between the two and both forms are conscious when Sue bludgeons Elisabeth to death, which also renders Sue without the sustenance she needs to survive. Desperate, Sue injects herself with the remnants of the original “activator” serum and births a monstrous body from her back.
The monster takes Sues place hosting a live New Year’s Eve broadcast, where she disgusts and horrifies the audience. As they attack her, the monster’s head explodes and then regenerates. She sprays the audience with copious amounts of blood before escaping the building, where she explodes on the sidewalk. The last part of the monster’s body crawls to Elisabeth’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame before dying. The next day, she is unceremoniously scrubbed off the floor by a mechanical cleaner.
Coralie Fargeat movies
- Revenge (2017) Fargeat’s feature debut is a bloody Mad Max inspired action horror movie about a young woman (Matilda Lutz) who is chased across a desert landscape by her boyfriend and his two dirtbag friends after a sexual assault severs civility among the group. Revenge is to the rape/revenge subgenre what The Substance is to body horror. They are both feminist films that feel like dark fairy tales. They also both contain finales which are very brutal and very fun.
- Reality+ (2014) This 22-minute short film was written and directed by Fargeat and is available on YouTube. It is set in a near future where biotechnology has advanced to allow people with an implanted chip to see themselves and others as physically perfect human beings for 12 hours a day. You can see how the ideas in The Substance evolved for Fargeat over the last 10 years.
Gnarly body horror
- Videodrome (1983) David Cronenberg’s influence is all over The Substance. The scene of Sue reaching inside her own body to remove a chicken leg will remind viewers of objects being inserted/removed from Max Renn’s stomach in Videodrome. The movie follows a television station employee (James Woods) who searches for the source of a bizarre broadcast.
- Re-Animator (1985) A mad scientist medical student (Jeffrey Combs) invents a serum that can reanimate the dead — with horrific consequences.
- Society (1989) A body horror movie about the pressures of conforming to societal ideals, Society may also be the one horror movie as obsessed with butts as The Substance.
- Body Melt (1993) A sci-fi comedy body horror movie about human test subjects for a diet drug. Not only do the side effects create grotesque body horror scenes, like The Substance, Body Melt has a few great exercise clothing looks.
See also: Our full list of the best body horror movies.
The horrors of doubles/alternates
- Dead Ringers (1988) Twin gynecologists (both played by Jeremy Irons) are so close that it seems like they share one life, even switching identities to sleep with women and perform surgeries. Like in The Substance it seems their survival is tied to each other. What one does deeply affects the other.
- Us (2019) A vacationing family is attacked and pursued by their doppelgängers, known as the “Tethered”. The doppelgängers wish to murder their counterparts and commandeer their lives.
- Dual (2022) A satirical sci-fi movie about a woman who has to fight to the death with her clone.
- Infinity Pool (2023) David Cronenberg’s son, Brandon Cronenberg, wrote and directed this horror movie about a vacationing man (Alexander Skarsgård) who learns a loophole to local law when he accidentally kills a man while drunk driving. He is able to pay a large sum of money to be cloned and have his clone be put to death in his place.
The horrors of aging
- The Shining (1980) Several aesthetic choices in The Substance seem to be inspired by Stanley Kubrick, like the red hallway with patterned carpet, the use of the 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) theme music and the nonsensical floorplan of Elisabeth’s apartment. The double forms of the woman in room 237 from The Shining also come to mind as they represent the same woman in her young and elderly bodies.
- Death Becomes Her (1992) Two women desperate to be young and beautiful ingest a black market serum with unintended side effects. Sound familiar? The ground-breaking computer-generated effects might be considered body horror if the tone of the film weren’t overtly comedic.
- X (2022) The fear of aging and loss of beauty is a major source of anxiety for the murderous septuagenarian Pearl in Ti West’s X trilogy. Mia Goth portrays both the young Maxine Minx and the elderly Pearl.
The horrors of drugs/addiction
At face value The Substance is about the extreme importance our culture places on adhering to beauty standards (especially for women, as Dennis Quaid’s character makes clear). The film also works as an allegory for addiction. Elisabeth’s life is split into two parts: her real self and “Sue”. As Sue thrives, Elisabeth deteriorates — which makes her more dependent on Sue and reluctant to quit The Substance. At first, the escape Sue provides seems like everything Elisabeth wants but in the end, it turns her into a monster. Many addiction movies capture this same feeling of diminishing returns and hopelessness.
- Christiane F (1981) A cult biographical drama detailing the 13-year-old title character’s descent into heroin addiction in 1970s West Berlin.
- Requiem for a Dream (2000) The physical costs of addiction are on full, gruesome display in this Darren Aronofsky drama.
- Evil Dead (2013) A movie as bloody as The Substance with a storyline that also touches on addiction. A woman’s friends take her to a cabin in the woods to be with her while she suffers through heroin withdrawal. Unfortunately her friends summon the deadites while passing the time.
The horrors of Hollywood
- Scream 3 (2000) While the tone of this slasher movie is much more comedic than The Substance, it is about the dark side of Hollywood. The diabolical actions of men like Dennis Quaid’s character in The Substance is the backdrop against which the story is set.
- Starry Eyes (2014) A horror movie about a young actresses who learns the price of fame in Hollywood.
- Always Shine (2016) A psychological thriller about two actresses who have achieved contrasting levels of success spending the weekend at a cabin in Big Sur.
- MaXXXine (2024) Maxine Minx (Mia Goth) is desperate to be a star in gritty 1980s Hollywood.
See also: Our list of horror movies about making movies.
Aerobic horror
- Killer Workout (1987) A bad 80’s slasher movie about a gym where exercise enthusiasts are murdered.
- AHS: 1984 (2019) The ninth season of American Horror Story can be viewed as a standalone miniseries or as part of the overall series arc. Emma Roberts, Billie Lourd, Leslie Grossman, Cody Fern, Matthew Morrison and Gus Kenworthy all wear their 80s aerobics finest while showing up to get slaughtered at Camp Redwood.
- Murdercise (2023) A horror comedy about a young woman who gets her big break working on a sleazy workout video.
More movies like ‘The Substance’ (2024)
- Carrie (1976) The bloody penultimate scene in The Substance will remind horror fans of the iconic prom bloodbath.
- The Stepford Wives (1975) Men transform their wives into “perfect”, submissive robot versions of themselves.
- Swallow (2019) A colorful psychological thriller about an isolated woman struggling to conform to expectations.
- Sanctuary (2022) This is the movie to watch if you loved Margaret Qualley in The Substance and want to see more of her. Sanctuary is a psychosexual thriller starring Qualley as a sex worker who is being fired by her employer.
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