Not for the squeamish: The Substance reviewed

Both horribly familiar and wonderfully shocking, this body-horror film written and directed by Coralie Fargeat does a very traditional thing – turning the scramble for youth and beauty into a monster of immeasurable disgust and immorality – in a huge way. There is nothing minimal or restrained or overly clever here; nothing of the nuance in language or wit that makes its forerunner, The Picture of Dorian Gray, so haunting. This is a presentation of the horror of ageing for the bombastic mash-up age, melding vampire, sci-fi, feminist tragicomedy and dystopian genres. It’s like a reverse Barbie but with lashings of Poor Things, Blonde, the uncomfortably up-close Marilyn Monroe biopic, and plenty more.

The story begins with Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), who has lost hers in a big way. She is a middle-aged morning TV aerobics star who was once the toast of Hollywood and she’s been sacked, in the crudest terms, on her 50th birthday for being too old.