The Substance’s First Trailer Witnesses a Beautiful, Terrifying Transformation

MUBI has released its first full-length trailer for The Substance, the upcoming sci-fi/body horror movie starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, and Dennis Quaid said to have received a nine-to-13 minute standing ovation at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Take a look:

Directed by Coralie Fargeat, The Substance stars Moore as Elisabeth Sparkle, the former host of an aerobics show fired on her 50th birthday. However, a mysterious laboratory comes to her aid with a neon green anti-aging serum, offering her the opportunity to become a “young, more beautiful, more perfect” version of herself.

Now, anyone who’s seen The Wasp Woman, The Leech Woman, or even Halle Berry’s Catwoman knows there’ll be a mutative catch of some sort, but what exactly that will look like is sold as the film’s central mystery. Moore’s character, naturally, injects herself with the miraculous “substance” of the title, whereupon she transforms into the similar-looking, but youthful, Margaret Qualley. Once she regains hosting duties of her morning aerobics program, it appears Sparkle-Moore and Sparkle-Qualley have some sort of difficulty balancing their “seven day” bodily time share. As Moore states in the trailer, “a slight misuse” of the substance apparently leads to paranoia, loss of impulse control, the formation of multiple irises and what looks like something that isn’t supposed to be there growing from her back.

While we don’t know if Sparkle becomes a monster just yet, an unseen representative of the “substance” warns her, “the one and only thing not to forget: you are one. You can’t escape from yourself.” So, do you think she’ll mutate into an uncanny hybrid of Moore attributes and Qualley attributes? Will Qualley erupt from Moore’s body, subcutaneously, like a werewolf shedding its dermis? The trailer includes shots of a fly floating in liquid and Quaid’s huckster character greedily eating shrimp. Could that mean Sparkle will go through various instars, like an arthropod? Is that what she screams about after seeing herself in the mirror, that she’s literally lost her spine?

At its two-hour and 20-minute runtime, we’ll have plenty of time to digest The Substance when it reaches theaters nationwide this September 20.

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