The Substance poster

The Substance (2024)

Film · 2h 21m · Rated R

Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

A fading star's quest for youth becomes a darkly comedic, surreal body horror nightmare.

Campy, with dark satire. A late-night trip at a brisk pace. Emotionally it is heavy.

Streaming on Hulu.

The Substance parents guide

The thing to know: strong sex and nudity, and extreme gore, more than an R usually carries. Beyond that, a few tense moments and a jolt or two.

Scare
Mildly scary
A few tense or eerie moments.
Jump scares
A couple
One or two sudden jolts.
Gore
Extreme gore
Our top level for gore.
Violence
Strong violence
Violence is frequent or intense.
Sex and nudity
Strong
Strong means explicit or repeated sex, extended nudity, or sexual assault shown on screen, attempted or completed, even partly off screen. Any one of these is enough.
Language
Strong
Frequent strong profanity or slurs.

How we rate: an AI reads what is known about each title and tags it 0 to 3; we check the tags against a hand-rated set and correct them by hand when readers tell us. Estimates, not a scene-by-scene review. Spot a mistake? Tell us.

Three questions

Is The Substance scary?
Only a little. The Substance has a few tense moments, nothing that follows you to bed.
How gory is The Substance?
Extreme gore and strong violence. If graphic gore is a dealbreaker, skip it.
What is The Substance rated, and is it OK for kids?
No. It is rated R, with strong sex and nudity, strong violence, and frequent strong language.

What is The Substance about?

A fading celebrity decides to use a black market drug, a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself.

Does it have a happy ending? (spoiler-safe)

It leaves the ending open to interpretation.

Cast and crew

Directed byCoralie Fargeat
StarringDemi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Edward Hamilton-Clark, Gore Abrams, Oscar Lesage

More like The Substance

The Substance is on our Halloween; Horror, not scary; Goriest; Set in Los Angeles; and Horror on Hulu lists.

More like this feeling

Prompts we typed into CouchRot, and the lists that share its tags.

Lists with the same feel: Weird and surreal and Late night.

Five more like The Substance

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Uses the TMDB API; not endorsed or certified by TMDB. Intensity, content, tone and pace tags are CouchRot's own.