The official trailer for The Substance is here.
The highly anticipated feature stars Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid in a story about toxic beauty culture.
As previously reported, writer-director Coralie Fargeat‘s body horror film has Moore playing Elizabeth Sparkle, an aging Hollywood superstar so desperate to regain her looks that she signs up to inject herself with a mysterious serum that shares the title’s name.
“All it takes is one injection and she is reborn — temporarily — as the gorgeous, twentysomething Sue,” played by Qualley, according to the official synopsis.
However — of course — it turns out to be too good to be true.
In the trailer, we see Elizabeth transform into Sue. But things take a turn when Elizabeth is shown talking on the phone and says that “there’s been a slight misuse of The Substance.”
“Going into it, it was really spelled out, the level of vulnerability and rawness that was really required to tell this story,” Moore said about the film in May. “It was a very vulnerable experience and just required going into it with a sensitivity and a lot of conversation about what we were trying to accomplish, how we were going to approach it.”
Moore also called Qualley a “great partner” during the shooting of the film’s nude scenes.
“We were obviously close in certain moments — naked,” Moore said. “It allowed us also a lot of levity in those moments at how absurd those certain situations were … [b]ut ultimately, it’s just about … really direct and clear communication and mutual trust.”
The film, which received a 13-minute standing ovation at its world premiere at the Cannes International Film Festival in June, arrives in theaters on Sept. 20.
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