If you intend to watch “The Substance,” don’t bring popcorn into the theater — you will quickly lose your appetite.

This film is centered around a middle-aged celebrity, Elisabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore), who rose to fame as a young adult in the entertainment industry. Upon turning 50 years old, Elisabeth’s director fires her from her Jazzercise-esque dance tutorial show, “Sparkle Your Life.”

In this sensitive state, the actress is offered a drug referred to only as the Substance. The drug promises to create a better version of herself — a separate entity that Elisabeth must switch places with every seven days.

Desperate to regain her youth, Elisabeth injects the Substance into her arm, and a new Elisabeth, who names herself Sue, emerges. At first, the two are happy — Sue takes Elisabeth’s place as television’s most-loved dance instructor and Elisabeth vicariously reexperiences her youth. It’s not long, though, before Elisabeth’s jealousy and Sue’s hatred make their relationship volatile.

“The Substance” is a master class on women’s rights issues. It’s not subtle about it either. From Sue’s dance scenes, where the dancers’ bodies are plastered across the screen for the audience to marvel at, to a montage of Elisabeth applying and removing makeup, fixing her hair and covering her body with gloves and scarves so that she might feel as beautiful as the young Sue for a date, this film shows viewers that women are only valued in their youthful bodies. Other notable themes include workplace harassment, which is displayed in Elisabeth’s relationship with a disgusting television studio executive, pointedly named Harvey, as well as eating disorders and drug culture.

The main theme of the film is the fear of aging that permeates modern American culture. Plastered across social media platforms, like TikTok and Instagram, are videos of influencers sharing their skincare routines, which are aimed at avoiding wrinkles, spots and anything else that might betray the fact that they are above the age of 16. However, the most dystopian consequence to come from anti-aging content is that today, girls as young as 10 are buying these intense, chemical-ridden products that they’ve seen their idols use.

Like Elisabeth Sparkle, these young influencers are good-looking and seem healthy before they begin their transformation. However, the obsession with maintaining their youthfulness creates a snowball effect in which even the smallest blemish is seen as a personal failure as they attempt to correct undesirable elements of their bodies.

For the most part, this film is effective at getting its message across. It is purposefully and intensely riddled with shock-value violence, but that’s the point. If women still struggle with body image issues after a decades-long struggle for women’s rights, then it’s clear that the only way to get society’s attention is to horrify us with the reality that has been created.

While central to the movie’s goals, there are times when the movie’s grotesqueness is too much. The horrors culminate roughly three-quarters of the way through the film. After that, the special effects go from terrifyingly believable to ridiculous when Sue chooses to take the Substance again, birthing a monstrous combination of Sue and Elisabeth. The ending may have been more impactful if Sue had continued the cycle of desiring youth and beauty.

“The Substance” is a thought-provoking piece that has sparked conversation about the anti-aging movement and other elements of American culture that force women to waste their time and money trying to attain the unattainable “perfect” body. However, it is not for the light-hearted or light-stomached. Viewer beware — one watch is enough for the film to stick.

Rating: 4/5