As soon as I learned that The Substance was directed by Coralie Fargeat, the French filmmaker behind Revenge, my favorite "hot girl hunts evil men" film, I was on board. Fargeat's style might be described as New New French Extremity—while the aughts-era stuff was gratuitously brutal to women (Noé's Irreversible comes to mind), Fargeat's approach calls upon grotesque, everyday misogyny—assault in Revenge, beauty standards in The Substance—to craft twisted counterattacks and fuck with her audience a little. Fargeat's newest film stars Demi Moore as an aging celeb who's game to inject herself with a black market serum to become younger and more beautiful. I'd say "couldn't be me," but then again, I've got a lot more aging ahead of me. Perhaps that underlying anxiety is part of the point.