John Carpenter didn’t like anything about The Substance

Seven years went from the time when director Coralie Fargeat made her feature directorial debut with a very cool revenge movie that was appropriately titled Revenge – you can read our 8/10 review of the film at THIS LINK – and when she came back with an “explosive feminist take on body horror” called The Substance, which stars Demi Moore (Ghost) and Margaret Qualley (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). The popular opinion is that Fargeat’s second movie was worth the wait (you can read our 9/10 review HERE), and it even earned Demi Moore an Oscar nomination. But someone who was not a fan of the movie at all is legendary genre filmmaker John Carpenter, who has been in the news a lot in recent weeks – which makes sense, given the fact that he was the director of the 1978 classic Halloween. During a recent Q&A, Carpenter revealed that he did not like anything about The Substance.

Carpenter didn’t go in-depth about why he didn’t like the movie, but you can watch him express his distaste for it in the video embedded at the bottom of this article.

The film is gory, but also humorous, and it’s quite a wild ride. Here’s the official synopsis: It generates another you. A new, younger, more beautiful, more perfect you. And there’s only one rule: You share time. One week for you. One week for the new you. Seven days each. A perfect balance. Easy. Right? If you respect the balance… what could possibly go wrong? A press release provides more information: Demi Moore gives a career best performance as Elisabeth Sparkle, a former A-lister past her prime and suddenly fired from her fitness TV show by repellent studio head Harvey. She is then drawn to the opportunity presented by a mysterious new drug: THE SUBSTANCE. All it takes is one injection and she is reborn – temporarily – as the gorgeous, twentysomething Sue (Margaret Qualley). The only rule? Time needs to be split: exactly one week in one body, then one week in the other. No exceptions. A perfect balance. What could go wrong? Deliriously entertaining and ruthlessly satirical, Coralie Fargeat’s Cannes sensation turns toxic beauty culture inside out with a be-careful-what-you-wish-for fable for the ages. Explosive, provocative and twisted, THE SUBSTANCE marks the arrival of a thrillingly visionary filmmaker. The Substance was rated R for strong bloody violent content, gore, graphic nudity and language.

If you want to hear some more John Carpenter hot takes, check out this video, which was shot on the set of Halloween and sees an early-in-his-career Carpenter expressing his lack of appreciation for filmmakers like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, and Robert Altman. Carpenter seemed to believe that cinema had fallen apart in the 1960s, and he didn’t care for what Lucas, Spielberg, and De Palma were putting out into the world. (Although he had positive things to say about American Graffiti and Jaws.) He directed his harshest criticism toward Altman, who he flat-out said was “not a good filmmaker.”

But before you click over there, here’s John Carpenter on The Substance:

The post John Carpenter didn’t like anything about The Substance appeared first on JoBlo.