The Substance ending spoilers follow.
Coralie Fargeat, the director of Demi Moore's new film The Substance, has explained its bizarre and bloody ending.
The film follows an actor named Elisabeth who takes a mysterious serum to salvage her career. This drug leads her to give birth to Sue, a younger version of herself who relies on 'stabiliser' fluid from Elisabeth's spine to continue to function.
Towards the end of the film, Elisabeth's younger doppelgänger kills her.
With no more fluid to sustain her, Sue injects herself again with the serum, leading to her birthing an inhumane-looking creature called Monstro Elisasue, who then goes on to host the New Year's show.
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Among other things, Monstro Elisasue continues to mutate and eventually showers the audience in a lot of blood. It's a very striking visual, but there is a specific meaning to why she explodes.
"Thematically, to spray that crowd was like, 'Okay, this is what you’re doing to us, so, now, f**k off. Enough'. You’re all complicit in crafting this violence, so this is the violence back." Fargeat told Entertainment Weekly. "It’s symbolic: Look at the violence, don’t shy away.
"All the violence that you project on me, the monster, at some points, it’s projected back on the audience, which is all of us."
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Moore, who plays Elisabeth, said that Sue's transformation into the monstrous form was a positive thing, in a twisted sense.
"It becomes the ultimate sense of the soul's freedom, because she's finally free of the prison of her own body, and she's back to the purity in the sense of who she really is, without that," the actor said.
Co-star Margaret Qualley (Sue) agreed, stating: "Sue is bereft of a soul through most of the film, and as her body falls apart and she becomes this monster, that’s when she experiences love for the first time and fully accepts herself."
The Substance is playing in cinemas now in the US and the UK and Ireland.
Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he's covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I'm a Fish.
