How do you honestly react to THE SUBSTANCE without using expletives? The commentary on sexualised imagery and aging isn’t subtle, but Coralie Fargeat’s body horror is powerful, cinematic and by turns nauseating and uncomfortably hilarious. Movie star-turned-TV fitness guru Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore, sensational) is deemed past her prime when she turns 50 and so begins taking “The Substance” in secret, growing a younger, sexier and more marketable version of herself out of her back to revitalise her career. But Liz and Sue (Margaret Qualley, hypnotic) must share one life and when the latter begins to take over at expense of her original host, a horrific chain of events are set in motion. Moore and Qualley seamlessly play two vastly different aspects of the same personality navigating a world that is heightened almost to cartoonish extremes but no less hard-hitting or satirically pointed because of it. You might find it difficult to shift some of the screwed-up imagery from this for a while. SSP