summary
- The Substance uses body horror to critique beauty standards and Hollywood’s obsession with youth.
- Female directors are using body horror to challenge societal expectations and empower women.
- The film explores the consequences of the pursuit of perfection and losing control over the aging process.
French film director Coralie Farge Essence It continues an inventive trend from several 2024 titles in the horror genre. Essence A fantastic body horror epic that critiques beauty standards from a feminist perspective. It questions society’s obsession with female youth and the pursuit of perceived perfection.This bombastic pastiche, which played cleverly with body horror tropes, received a 13-minute standing ovation at Cannes and was a big comeback role for Demi Moore, who said: deadline Material Issues “This man’s point of view This is the idealized image of a woman that we women have come to believe in.”
Using a sci-fi premise in which a young clone emerges from its older host as if the latter were a shell, Fargé viscerally portrays the tenets of previous body horror films, mirroring the real-life challenges Moore portrays. Body horror has traditionally removed personality from the body as if it were waste.Fear of losing control of the physical self. Essence The work centres around an obsession with controlling the natural ageing process – a theme that has also featured in some of this year’s notable feminist works, such as Rose Glass’s Control of the Body. Love bleeds.
Body horror is used to express both agency and oppression.
Essence In this body horror sneer at Hollywood’s obsession with youth, aerobics star Elizabeth (Demi Moore) is recently fired by her boss (Dennis Quaid) and offered the chance to rejuvenate herself with a mysterious injection. “Better” In Elizabeth’s version, Sue (Margaret Qualley) emerges grotesquely from her back, the reptilian’s shedding of skin reflected in the snake-like patterns on her clothing, and the two lead the same life as Elizabeth, but tensions grow as Sue craves more control. The cloning process shows the lengths to which many people will go to achieve society’s ideals.It’s born out of the misogynistic idea that she has an expiration date: her youth is her currency.
Another clever way Essence Elizabeth’s work uses the female body as its core message. She does everything right in the capitalist patriarchal way. She is an empowered working woman, She achieves her slim figure through aerobics, in keeping with beauty standards.She has yet to win, which is shocking considering Demi Moore’s powerful role in 1997. G.I. JaneIt fit her lithe frame perfectly. strip It was 1996. It’s not hard to imagine the toll this took on Moore’s body. As she writes in her memoir: Inside OutShe confessed that she felt like she couldn’t stop exercising.
Surgical horror is a trope of body gothic. This science fiction element is used effectively by Farge with the cloning process and the mysterious syringe.materialThe spectacular parodies the entertainment industry’s prevalence of injectable and surgical cosmetic procedures and their symbiotic relationship with society’s beauty standards. Sue saps Elizabeth’s life force, accelerating her deterioration. There’s no balance to be found, and it shows how the obsession with youth can be all-consuming.The body has long been used as a revolutionary tool in body horror. Essence It’s a clear protest.
A female director will revolutionize horror movies in 2024
Rose Glass Explores Bodybuilding and Empowerment
Essence It’s not the first film to expand on the possibilities of body horror in 2024. Love bleeds It became a big hit, Promoting a satisfying fulfillment of a woman’s self-image She is in her debut Saint MaudThis crime thriller follows Lou (Kristen Stewart), who lives a modest life unclogging toilets at the gym she owns. Her life unexpectedly changes when Jackie (Katie O’Brien) wanders into her free weight room to train for a bodybuilding competition. The two develop a romantic relationship centered around Jackie’s goals, leaving a trail of dead bodies and steroid injections in their wake.
The horror scene in 2024 is undergoing a gruesome yet beautiful transformation, with female directors like Farge and Glass using body horror to deconstruct the objectification of women. Essence Criticizing ageism in Hollywood Love bleeds One film celebrates the unconventional beauty of female bodybuilders, and both use the shock value of the genre to deliver powerful social commentary. The trend suggests a future in which body horror will reclaim narratives surrounding the female body.Horror has evolved from a space that exploits anxieties around femininity and transformation to a platform for women to explore agency.
sauce: deadline
Essence
- director
- Coralie Farge
- release date
- May 19, 2024
- cast
- Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Gore Abrams, Hugo Diego Garcia
- runtime
- 140 min
