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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a movie or literary work.

The Fear of Aging and Society’s Obsession with Youth 

One of the central themes in The Substance is the fear of aging and the entertainment industry's obsession with youth. Elisabeth Sparkle, once a celebrated actress and an Oscar winner, loses everything because of the unavoidable passage of time. Her decades of experience and talent hold no value in a world that prioritizes fresh, youthful appearances over any sort of professional legacy. Her desperation to remain relevant drives her to The Substance, a drug that offers a hail-Mary pass at eternal youth at a devastating cost. Fargeat’s film presents aging as something that women fear and abhor. Failing to complete the impossible task of staying young and beautiful is always ultimately punished. It’s a creative exaggeration of the real-world state of the entertainment industry.  

While some men in the industry continue to find work well into their later years, actresses often struggle to secure any roles as they age. Elisabeth is a product of this system and is forced to watch her worth dwindle in the eyes of others. This humiliating process contributes significantly to her self-hatred and her pursuit of perfection at any cost. In her mind, her value diminishes with every passing day. The silver screen is not the only place where this painful “truth” feels true. For example, there’s an uncomfortable moment when Sue is building the hideaway room and making a lot of noise. Her male neighbor hammers on the door and shouts at her, thinking it’s Elisabeth who is disturbing him. When a glowing, underwear-and-t-shirt clad Sue answers the door, he immediately stops shouting and offers to help her. Even in her own home, Elisabeth is not safe from the discrimination she faces as a middle-aged woman. 

Elisabeth's tragic arc is a literal interpretation of the destructive consequences of this mindset. By splitting “herself” into two bodies—one aging and one youthful—she is attempting to cheat the system. However, she isn’t actually able to escape her aging body; she is forced to watch from a distance as Sue’s youth and success accelerate her decline. The more she fights against time as Elisabeth, the more Sue consumes her. The film’s grotesque body horror serves is a physical manifestation of this fear. When Elisabeth’s finger ages rapidly because Sue steals an extra day of time, its greying, horrible shape makes the rest of her hand look practically newborn in comparison. Scenes where Elisabeth is the focus are lit in unpleasant greys and fluorescent white, while Sue’s lighting—until the end of her time in the world—shows the version of LA where she lives as pink, shimmering, and always flattering. By the film’s end, Elisabeth has completely lost herself. She is dead, Sue is dead, and her grossly disembodied face is the only remnant of her that briefly before being wiped off her Hollywood Walk of Fame. The Substance presents aging as both an undefeatable enemy, and as a natural process that has disproportionately negative effects on women. 

The Loss of Identity in Pursuit of Perfection 

Throughout The Substance, Elisabeth's struggle to maintain relevance in her contemporary entertainment landscape transforms into a deeper conflict over identity. She begins as a woman desperate to hold on to a career that has slipped away and ends as a woman who has lost three “versions” of herself in the pursuit of that same career. This, of course, raises the question of whether Sue is truly a facet of Elisabeth, or whether in making her, Sue has tied her fate to that of an entirely separate person. The film repeatedly surfaces this unresolved question to explore how people lose themselves when they chase an unattainable ideal. 

The Substance comes with a set of extremely specific instructions. One of the most often-repeated ones is an injunction to remember that the “new body” and the original user are “one.” Elisabeth’s identity crisis begins long before she undergoes this transformation; she’s already split into two people because of her paralyzing body dysmorphia. Although Demi Moore is clearly a beautiful woman—a fact the film makes sure to remind the audience of repeatedly— she sees her real self as monstrous and her “ideal” self as the only acceptable version of her. She watches herself on TV constantly, and her apartment’s enormous floor-to-ceiling window faces a colossal billboard of her airbrushed and aerobics-outfitted body. When she creates Sue, she expects her to be a controllable but improved version of herself. However, Sue hates Elisabeth just as much as Elisabeth hates herself; it’s a nightmarish realization of the disgust Elisabeth feels when comparing her old body to her current one. While Elisabeth remains tied to the past, consumed by memories of what she once was and furious at Sue for stealing her “time,” Sue thrives in the present because she has no experience of dealing with its fallout. 

The film presents this split as both physical and psychological. Elisabeth and Sue share a consciousness, but their desires are fundamentally incompatible. Elisabeth wants to reclaim her past through Sue, while Sue wants to live in the present and enjoy the rewards of her perfect physique. The more Elisabeth clings to the idea of who she used to be and self-flagellates for being the way she is, the more alien she becomes to Sue. Some of the horror of The Substance stems from the impossibility of reconciling these two versions of anyone’s self. Elisabeth’s desperate attempt to reclaim control leads to her undoing, while Sue’s belief that she can exist without consequences also results in a truly gory and grotesque downfall.  

The All-Consuming Power of Addiction 

In The Substance, addiction is a relentless force that consumes both body and mind, and the movie portrays Elisabeth and Sue’s relationship to The Substance in the same way that other contemporary films have addressed pharmaceutical and opiate addictions. Elisabeth and Sue instantly become dependent on The Substance to survive once Elisabeth begins to inject it. Elisabeth’s addiction strips her of control over her life, forces her into dangerous and harmful situations, and ultimately destroys her. 

Before she becomes dependent on The Substance, Elizabeth is dependent on external validation and attention. She does not just seek youth— that by itself is not enough—but craves the adoration that being a young, beautiful woman in Hollywood can guarantee. The Substance promises an easy solution to this impossible problem, but its results come with dark consequences.  

Instead of reclaiming her life, Elisabeth becomes trapped in a cycle of dependency. When Sue enters this cycle, she also falls prey to addiction. The more Substance she uses and the more time she “steals” from Elisabeth, the less control she maintains over her own future. She’s mortgaging her own health for success and beauty, and risking annihilation for both herself and Elisabeth. Fargeat’s film equates addiction to The Substance with addiction to any controlled substance. All addictions offer temporary and fleeting satisfaction while demanding greater and greater sacrifices from addicts. Elisabeth and Sue, like many addicts, believe they can maintain control, but in reality, neither can escape the consequences. The industry feeds on their addiction, and by the time they realize it, it’s too late to stop. 

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