Fight Club is still one of the peak cinematic explorations of toxic masculinity. Now, we may finally have a true female equivalent in The Substance.

Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is a former Oscar darling whose career has stalled out, stranding her in a Jane Fonda-esque workout show. When she overhears her producer demanding they replace her with someone younger and hotter, she’s desperate to do whatever it takes to stay in the limelight. Enter The Substance.

She’s handed a mysterious ad that promises to create a better version of herself — literally. In this case, her alter ego is the sexy, youthful Sue (Margaret Qualley). It’s not long before Sue and Elisabeth begin fighting to the death for the right to exist.

Fight Club allows Edward Norton’s two selves, Jack and Tyler, to remain a mystery to him until the end. The film doesn’t afford that same luxury to the women. In The Substance, it’s explicitly clear that Elisabeth and Sue are two halves of a whole. “Remember you are one,” as The Substance’s instructions repeatedly remind them and us. 

Women are never allowed to forget that their external and internal selves are two beings because we live in a society that makes it abundantly clear that our exteriors are for public consumption. Our job is to provide men with a buffet. Our sin lies in ever failing to deliver.

And getting old? Having the audacity to grow? To change? To refuse to be locked in stasis at 28? Baby, in Hollywood that makes you persona non grata.

No wonder Elisabeth barely seems to think before calling the mysterious number for The Substance and agreeing to the vague instructions. She’ll stick, poke, and prod herself, no questions asked. The promise of a better version of herself is too tempting to withstand the allure.

It doesn’t take long for that promise to become a nightmare, though, and everything about Coralie Fargeat’s direction and Stanislas Reydellet’s production design has you bracing for it. Reydellet’s sets are large, sparse, liminal spaces. They often harken back to the menace of The Shining’s Overlook Hotel, with the red and white tiled bathroom and the never-ending studio hallway with its orange, 70s-inspired carpet.

Meanwhile, Fargeat makes the camera a serial killer and butcher. It chops up the cast into nothing but their most base parts. Mouths, lips, tits, and lots and lots and lots of ass. Extreme close-ups slice and dice the actors’ bodies, and we’re all too eager to gobble them up. Because let’s not forget: this is a body horror.

The visuals are graphic yet medical, sterile, and even clean. For instance, when the serum starts to work and Elisabeth’s other self is born, the skin of her back splits neatly and her new self climbs out, not covered in a horrorshow of fluids and gore, but glistening like, well, as Taylor would say, a sexy baby.

Fargeat aims to tantalize and horrify us in equal measure. For every shot of a perfectly pouty lip or jiggling rear, there’s another of an oozing spinal tap or a fingernail plucked out like a feather on a chicken. That’s the battle that The Substance is here to highlight. 

As the fight between Elisabeth and Sue ramps up, so does the violence, culminating in a blood-soaked gore fest that will have audiences fist-pumping and dry-heaving in equal measure. The Substance is a film that not only demands your attention but wholly deserves it. Endlessly rewatchable and full of career-best performances, this is one made for the big screen.

The Substance begins changing lives in theaters September 20.

The Substance Trailer: