Today is Saturday, October 11, 2025. It’s late here, owing to Elliot and I watching the ending of 2024’s body-horror extravaganza starring Demi Moore in a very courageous role, The Substance, on HBO Max. I believe it was just added to the streaming service and I had always intended to see it on the big screen, but somehow missed it. We started watching it yesterday and paused it after 40 minutes or so.

This film explores many subjects, primarily the exploitation of women in the entertainment industry and how women adapt – or don’t – to the vicissitudes of aging. Moore plays an aging star, Elisabeth Sparkle, who learns that she will be replaced by a far younger star on her workout show. She learns this horrible news from overhearing the TV producer of the show, smarmily portrayed by Dennis Quaid, as Harvey, talking to someone on the phone in the men’s room of the studio where her show is taped.

Sparkle leaves the studio in tears and immediately gets involved in a car accident. It is when she is being examined to see if she has sustained any injuries that she meets someone who leads her to the substance. The plot that proceeds from here takes apart what one may do to cling to stardom, beauty, access, and fame, no matter what the cost might be. The film exposes how dangerous it can be to tie self-worth to star status and/or youth. This is shown physically by having two bodies that must share an alternating schedule with dire consequences if the schedule is not followed religiously.

What one could extrapolate from this is the idea of harming your body for temporary physical gains (unsafe beauty treatments, surgery, drugs, etc.) with no consideration for how it may catch up with you in the future.

Sparkle’s younger version of herself is played by much gusto by Margaret Qualley as Sue. In order to get this newer and better version of herself, in a rather grotesque scene, she bursts out of Elisabeth’s back like a mutant butterfly from a cocoon.

In fact, the film abounds in many grotesque scenes, so I don’t recommend it to the faint hearted. There are many homages in this contemporary horror film, directed by Coralie Fargeat, to other auteurs of gore, people like Brian De Palma, David Cronenberg, and even Stanley Kubrick in long shots of carpets and corridors a la The Shining. Other horror mavens like myself should be able to pick up the references to other filmmakers while watching this tour de force performance by Moore who lets it literally hang out, if you know what I mean.

As outlined by instructions on how to use the substance, the old Demi-Moore-shaped carcass is abandoned in the bathroom when Sue is at large while the two must swap bodies every seven days “without exception.” As you would expect, the much younger version of Moore, Sue, becomes too enamored of her more beautiful self and begins to ignore the explicit instructions to reinvigorate her old self, thus paving the way for disastrous repercussions.

This is when the special effects department really goes to town, as an excessive amount of gore, blood, and other effluvia are discharged onto your screen. I hate to say since I’ve seen so many horror films, this didn’t disturb me like so many of my friends who were disturbed by these scenes. The last third of the film truly delivers in terms of body transformations and the splattering of blood – like tons of it.

There were questions I had about Quaid’s performance who really overdid his raging lusty male executive role too broadly here, and I couldn’t believe that Moore had no friends or relatives with which to interact with when she wasn’t working. She basically holes up in her luxury apartment talking to no one waiting for the seven days to elapse when she must swap her body for Qualley’s. I wondered how lonely she really was. At one point, she desperately calls an acquaintance from her past who accidentally collides with her in the street in order to quell her loneliness. I didn’t find this aspect of the film that convincing.

Overall, I would heartedly recommend this film to more seasoned horror veterans, but not to the occasional horror viewer. The scenes might be too much to take.

In the meantime, a coastal flood warning is in effect here, from what I hear. Today’s rain did not deter me from driving to Williamsburg where I had brunch at Juliette, on North 5th Street. I had the banana stuffed French toast.

I then walked into a longtime bookstore on Bedford Avenue called Spoonbill & Sugartown Books where I spied several books I have already read for my gay men’s reading club. In a few days, I will start reading The Power of the Dog, by Thomas Savage. I hope the book is more satisfying than the Netflix film adapted from the book in 2021. I did see the film when it was first released, and I recall I didn’t like it much. I’m sure the book is much better.

I then browsed the shelves of Mother of Junk, a very cluttered thrift store on Driggs Avenue. I did buy one album, a Petula Clark record. Who is she? you might be asking. She is a British singer, actress, and songwriter and is better known for her catchy tune, “Downtown,” and is called “the First Lady of the British Invasion.” Basically, she’s a pop singer from the 1960s.

From there, I walked to Black Spring Books, another bookstore on Driggs Avenue. Here I purchased a book on the Lower East Side for Elliot whose birthday is October 20.

I rounded up my tour of Williamsburg by having coffee at Blue Bottle on 4th Street. I actually had to use the men’s room so I figured I’d have a cup of their high-priced coffee before using the lavatory.

Well, tomorrow is another day. Let’s hope we don’t have a tsunami then.

Enjoy your Sunday anyway.

And so it went!