The scariest moments in "The Substance" have nothing to do with blood and guts

When I walked into a local movie theater on New York’s Lower East Side to see “The Substance” last weekend, I did so in an uncharacteristic way, knowing hardly anything about the film before planting myself in a seat. Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” tells the story of Elisabeth Sparkle, a middle-aged former Hollywood aerobics star who has been ousted by her employer, a sleazeball-suited type named Harvey who Dennis Quaid plays a little too well. Feeling deflated about her languishing career — and for basically being called old parts by her boss — Elisabeth orders “The Substance,” a serum that enables her to “give birth” to the younger, hotter version of herself: Sue The serum works wonders, but there’s a hyper-caveat. While watching Sue’s back unzip as a guy she brought home undoes her snakeskin bodysuit, giving way to a cascading waterfall of bloody organs, I leaned over to my boyfriend between slitted fingers held in front of my eyes and said, “I don’t think I could ever be a surgeon.” And yet, for all of “The Substance”’s stomach-flipping, ear-plugging content, what left me the most affected by the film was the raw emotion it engendered. In “The Substances”’s final moments, As Elisabeth’s blob of flesh comes to rest on her Hollywood Star, bathed in the warm glow of memories of her past fame, I was terrified.