The remaining months of 2024 are filled with some very exciting upcoming horror movies, both indie productions and franchise features alike, and one of the most exciting of the bunch is writer/director Coralie Fargeat's The Substance. The provocative, twisted vision had its world premiere earlier this summer at the Cannes Film Festival, earning some outrageous praise in the aftermath – and while hype is high, in the weeks leading up to the film's theatrical release, star Demi Moore has now added to the excitement by making an interesting comparison of it to one of her most iconic 90's titles.
Moore will long be remembered for her performance in the beloved 1990 romance Ghost, co-starring Patrick Swayze and Whoopi Goldberg, and while that movie doesn't really categorize as horror, she drew a direct link between the film and The Substance during a recent interview with Empire. The two features are extremely different tonally, but when she had the opportunity to read Coralie Fargeat's script, she recognized a familiar potential. Said Moore,
Reading Ghost, I thought, ‘Wow, we’ve got a love story, a thriller and a comedy.’ This could either be a disaster, or come together and somehow work.’ [The Substance] fits into that category.
Said to be a body horror feature that will make audiences squirm, The Substance stars Demi Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle – the star of an aerobics program who gets fired on her 50th birthday. Scared about her future, she opts to accept an illegal substance that promises to turn her into a younger and more beautiful version of herself. Needless to say, there are unexpected consequences.
In the new interview, Demi Moore added that she knew absolutely nothing about the script when it first ended up in her hands; instead, her management team trusted that she would engage with the material by simply experiencing the read – and it turns out they were right. She told the magazine,
My team sent it with a caveat of, ‘[We] don’t want to say anything about it, just read it.’ Because even on paper, it takes you on such a wild ride. Yet it had real depth, and the subject is so important.
The first trailer for The Substance arrived earlier this month, and it's certainly a head-turner. Unlike a lot of modern horror movie previews, it doesn't seem to give everything away – and instead, it opts to intrigue with some intense imagery and editing. I challenge any horror fan to watch the trailer below and not immediately want to seek it out:
The best news of all is that The Substance is heading to theaters just in time for spooky season 2024, and spooky season 2024 is right around the corner. Horror fans will have to wait through the weeks of August (which includes the release of Fede Álvarez's Alien: Romulus and Zoë Kravitz’s Blink Twice), but the hyped feature starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, and Dennis Quaid will be in theaters on September 20.
