Movies like The Substance

“The Substance (2024) is a 2020s French-anchored body-horror sci-fi thriller that stages celebrity decline as a production challenge. The film frames its conflict—an ageing celebrity using a cell-replicating substance—in tactile terms, pairing prosthetic fabrication with high-contrast chiaroscuro to make biological regression feel material. Lupani judges it necessary because it converts bioethical anxieties about agency and embodiment into concrete craft choices that demand technical and moral attention.”