Horror director Coralie Fargeat was offered a Marvel blockbuster with a female lead. Instead, she made a horror masterpiece that is now in the running for five Oscars.
Having the right instinct and taking risks are two valuable skills for successful filmmakers. And no one was more successful and courageous with this strategy last year than director Coralie Fargeat.
Fargeat never stopped believing in her film The Substance – even during significant financing difficulties in the coronavirus pandemic, or after Universal dropped the visually stunning Hollywood satire about sexism and youth culture like a hot body horror potato.
The Substance director Coralie Fargeat rejected the Marvel blockbuster Black Widow
Fortunately, the filmmaker’s courage paid off and The Substance received five Oscar nominations, among other honors. In categories such as best film, best director and best actress for Demi Moore, who celebrated her big comeback with the Hollywood grotesque. Variety then dedicated an extensive portrait to Fargeat, in which it was mentioned in passing that she even turned down the lucrative Marvel offer to make Black Widow with Scarlett Johansson. (The film was eventually made by her colleague Cate Shortland.)
Coralie Fargeat remembers the enormous resistance to her brutal vision, which she apparently considered more necessary than a Marvel adventure:
I held on to it so tightly during the filming and difficult post-production phases when everyone wanted me to make it less violent, less excessive, less bloody, less frontal. […] And I knew that to do justice to the story I wanted to tell, the movie had to show everything so that people would feel it above all, without censoring itself in terms of intensity.
The Substance was the best horror movie of 2024
The result, which is as nauseating as it is disturbing, is certainly worth seeing in all its monstrosity. The Moviepilot editorial team even voted The Substance the fourth-best film of 2024, which makes it the best horror title of the last year for us.
If you want to see for yourself (and dare!), you can find the movie on Mubi with a streaming subscription. The substance is also available for rent or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV and other platforms.