kindofplace

It's a Noah Hawley show with sporadic appearances by Special Guest Star: The Alien. 3 episodes in and there's nothing more to it. Maybe Disney execs played Spin The Bottle with the next Alien project, but this is more about all the Peter Pn references that the show just can't help itself from inserting, no matter how irrelevant to Alien Peter Pan simply is. Season 2 becomes The Rescuers vs. Alien. Why?

A bunch of terminally ill kids are given young adult android bodies, and they all get named after characters from Peter Pan. This is so some profound sht all up in this show. Meanwhile, a research ship crash lands right into a competing mega corporation's apartment block. Hardly anyone seems to care, and the city looks deserted. And Alex Lawther is criminally miscast. I think he's survived 4 encounters with the Big Chap already and he runs. And runs and] gets away. Previously... on Alien Earth". Noah Hawley couldn't come up with a better idea than naming a character Boy Kavalier.

So, each episode ends with an iconic metal tune over the end credits. And you'll probably catch up on sleep.

This episode is going to get comparisons to the opening of Saving Private Ryan. There's a similar visceral effect,, but this is the culmination of 20 episodes so far.

There's an urgency and importance of this show within the ridiculousness of a political climate where "it's easier to hide behind 40 atrocities than a single incident" and people can be so easily convinced neighboring countries are "ripping them off" by the same leader who collaborated, and signed said trade agreement; where the prospect of annexing (a.k.a. Invading) your neighbor is spun as something amusing. If such prospects don't alarm you in real life, then you probably have no time for social commentary in entertainment and might not have noticed any before James Cameron posted that interview with George Lucas a few years ago. The same interests that take the literal meaning out of the phrase "social justice" and mock any action that's not motivated purely by personal gain, often go out of their way to prevent others from seeing stuff like this.

This was ten times the movie I expected. I'm not a horror or gore fan, but in an era when social commentary is branded as "woke" by those who tend not to pick up on it, I'll lend my ears to a filmmaker with something to say through horror.

"The Substance" doesn't pretend to be "for everyone". I can hardly stomach needles onscreen, but it's the SOUND palette of this movie that might be the most disgusting sound design I've ever experienced in a movie, yet it's cartoonish at the same time. Kind of like the dessert wafer scene in Monty Python's "The Meaning Of Life" on acid. You'll know the basics of the plot by now, but the execution is centered in a feminist Cronenberg social critique and then skips numerous opportunities to just quit at any convenient ending point to take a detour from David Lynch's Mulholland Drive to his Elephant Man with John Waters' and Divine's middle fingers to society's relegating women to window dressing for the enjoyment of others, and still refusing to let up without a full on Gwar show finale (just as messy and just as silly) that generously delivers the gross-out spectacle while mocking our collective refusal to deal with seeing ourselves age.

Don't see it on a full stomach.

[PS: Props also to the dark techno angle of the film score. I'm sure the music supervisor(s) were aware of the track "Substance (Felix Da Housecat Remix)" by Dot Allison. While not as dark and heavy as the film's score, it seems a missed opportunity not to include it somewhere, even over the end credits. I recommend looking the song up wherever you get your music.]