The Substance (2024)

[00:00:21] Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the final girl on 6th Avenue podcast. My name is Karen. Hi, my name is Marilyn Smith Hillmer and I am 6th Avenue's very own Final Girl. [00:00:31] And today we are going to be talking about the Substance. [00:00:39] If you haven't seen the Substance and you can't go see it in a theater for whatever reason, if it's not playing near you anymore, for the love of God, you have, like, just watch it at home. [00:00:55] Go to Mubi, get a one month subscription. Get a free trial from somebody. I don't care. Ask your friend for the password. Whatever you have to do. This is one of the best modern body horror films I've ever seen. [00:01:17] The way that this film is a complete assault on all of your senses at all times. [00:01:26] Relentless. [00:01:30] You, your jaw will be on the floor nearly the entire time you're watching. Okay, so before I get into it all, of course we have to check on our Bible, you know, IMDb. The substance was released 2024. Rated R. 2 hours and 21 minutes. It's a little long. It's a little long. It's worth it. [00:02:00] The Substance is written and directed by Coralie Farget, starring Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley and Dennis Quaid. Really interesting role for Dennis Quaid, but I don't hate it. I'm not mad at it at all. [00:02:19] The, you know, plot description is this. [00:02:24] A fading celebrity takes a black market drug, a cell replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself. [00:02:37] And some of you might be wondering, okay, I've seen the preview. I understand that, you know, Demi Moore is considered to be the older woman who's looking for a younger version of herself. Why in the world would Demi Moore be the one looking for a prettier version of herself? Because she's already beautiful. [00:02:57] You are not alone, okay? You're not alone in that. [00:03:02] And I'll talk more about that later. [00:03:04] But Demi Moore is absolutely one of the most beautiful women that's ever lived. Is still one of the most beautiful women that's ever lived. [00:03:14] There's. She's perfect to me. [00:03:17] But with all this in mind, let's just get into it because, you know, this film won the best screenplay at 2024 can. So, you know, it's kind of really fucking good. [00:03:37] The film opens an egg, okay? Cracked egg on a blue background. [00:03:44] The yolk is whole and the white is around it, but it looks clear because it's of the background that it's on. [00:03:50] And an unknown person wearing black latex gloves injects the yolk of the egg with a green liquid. And the yolk begins to split into two, creating an entirely new yolk and a separate yolk. [00:04:11] So when I saw that, I'm like, we're in for a ride. [00:04:16] A new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is installed for Ms. Elizabeth Sparkle. [00:04:23] Pretty interesting to watch the process of those getting installed, by the way. I had no idea how that even remotely occurred. So that was pretty cool and educational. I appreciated that. [00:04:36] When it's completed, Elizabeth is photographed on the night of the unveiling. And then we see the star on its own. As the seasons change, we see people becoming, you know, at first they're really interested and everybody stops to take a photo of it and they're like, oh, I love Elizabeth. [00:04:54] And then as the seasons go on, people become less interested in it. They're walking over it. They're not stopping to take photos anymore. [00:05:02] Homeless people are wheeling the carts of their belongings over it. And even a guy drops an entire hamburger on it and gets ketchup everywhere. [00:05:11] So first it was a big deal. Now it's not so much. [00:05:16] Elizabeth is a big time aerobics instructor on tv, and she ends each of her shows by saying, take care of yourself, and blows a kiss at the audience. [00:05:28] So after leaving the set of her show one day, people from the network within the hallway, you know, as she's walking to the bathroom, stop to tell her happy birthday. And she's just kind of like polite, like, oh, thank you, thank you. [00:05:41] She gets to the bathroom. The women's bathroom is closed, so she opts for the men's bathroom. There's really like hardly anybody ever in this actual hallway. So she didn't think anything of it. [00:05:52] So she goes into the bathroom, she goes into a stall, and as she does, Dennis Quaid's character Harvey comes in and is on the phone. He comes in to use a urinal, and he's on the phone with somebody saying, you know, I don't care what we promised her. I need her hot, I need her young, and I need her right now. [00:06:18] He claims that their network is not a charity and is complaining about Elizabeth's age. And so just before he leaves the restroom, he makes sure to say on the phone that a woman's fertility starts to decrease after the age of 25. [00:06:38] I don't know what that has to do with anything at this point because she's not 26. She's not playing a 26 year old. She's playing a 50 year old. [00:06:49] Basically, he's implying that Elizabeth is Just way too old to be hosting this show anymore. Which is fucking crazy because she looks better than I will probably ever look in my entire life. [00:07:02] So there's our introduction and then we get to part one. Elizabeth. [00:07:09] Harvey takes Elizabeth out to lunch where he eats what I can only describe as. [00:07:17] I don't even know if they're langoustines. I can't even tell. They're large. They're probably just shrimp. He eats the most disgusting amount of shrimp with this like creamy bearnaise looking sauce. And he's just messy. There's shit all over the table. Like, there's shit everywhere. He's slapping his jaws when he's talking with his mouth full. [00:07:38] And Elizabeth just sits there and he's telling her, at 50, it stops. [00:07:46] And she asks what stops? [00:07:49] And instead of answering her, he gets distracted by a younger, quote unquote, more hot waitress at the restaurant they're at. Before his gaze gets to, you know, another guy who also works in television. And they just start to bro out and he's like, your ratings are insane. They leave together. And he leaves Elizabeth at the table all alone. [00:08:18] So basically he fired her at lunch. [00:08:22] On her way home from lunch, she gets into a car accident. She is driving along and she sees this billboard along the road that she's on for a toothpaste advertisement and they're taking it down. [00:08:38] And in her distracted driving, she gets in an accident. So she goes to the hospital, she gets evaluated, and she's told that everything's good to go, doesn't even have a cracked molar. And the doctor tells her that his wife is a huge fan of hers and begins to tell her happy birthday after checking her chart. And she starts to cry as soon as he starts to say happy birthday. And lucky for him, he gets a page and he leaves. [00:09:06] But the nurse stays in with her and opens up the back of her gown and says, you know, we have one more exam. [00:09:16] This exam includes him checking her vertebrae of her spine by pushing his thumb down in between each of them. And then says, you're a good candidate. [00:09:32] He brings her her coat and says he wishes her the best. And she notices that he has a really large red circular like birthmark on his hand. [00:09:43] Outside of the hospital, she reaches into her pocket of her coat and finds a piece of paper that says, it changed my life with a USB drive. And the drive has. It's a black drive with white writing. It says the substance on one side and on the other side there's a phone number. [00:10:02] And as she's like trying to figure out what this is. Fred, a former school classmate, sees her and tells her that she is still the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world and asks her if she would like to grab a drink sometime. And he gives her his phone number. [00:10:22] So back at home, roses were delivered. [00:10:26] There's a note with it that says, thank you for all of your years with us. You were amazing. [00:10:32] Not, you are amazing. You were amazing. [00:10:37] So she plugs the USB into her TV and sits down to watch. [00:10:42] Cue TV screen. [00:10:45] A voice over what's being shown says, have you ever dreamt of a better version of yourself? [00:10:55] Younger, more beautiful, more perfect. [00:11:00] One single injection unlocks your DNA, starting a new cellular division that will release another version of yourself. This is the substance. [00:11:13] You are the Matrix. Everything comes from you and everything is you. This is simply a better version of your. [00:11:23] And there's a demonstration that they're showing where there's two balls of play dough. One is lumpy, and then, you know, it points two arrows to the right at a perfectly round, polished ball of play doh. [00:11:42] So you're a frumpy before and you're perfect. Then the voice continues. You just have to share. One week for one and one week for the other. A perfect balance of seven days each. [00:11:55] The one and only thing not to forget, you are one. You can't escape from yourself. [00:12:04] And then the hands with the two play DOH balls, you know, smash together. And the film cuts into static. [00:12:11] Apparently not impressed at all. She didn't care. She takes the USB and throws it in the trash and goes to a bar to drink five dirty martinis. And I would consider myself a pretty experienced drinker. And I have never had five martinis in one night. [00:12:29] That is way too many. [00:12:32] So she goes home and obviously throws up because who the fuck can keep all that down? [00:12:40] After rinsing her face off with some water, she goes and finds a snow globe with a version of herself inside of it. And it's like a snapshot in time of her, like a younger version of her that, you know, is her inside of the snow globe. And there's, you know, glitter all over it when you shake it. And this sets her off. [00:13:02] She takes the snowball snow globe and she throws it at this enormous photo of herself in her living room from when she was younger. The photo is when she was younger as well. And the snow globe shatters. And it also shatters like. And leaves a mark on the photo. Like it, I think there was a frame over it. It's kind of Hard to tell. But over her eye, one of her eyes that's shown in the photo, there's this, like, starburst, you know, pattern where the eye used to be. [00:13:33] She ends up digging the USB out of the trash, though, because I guess, why the fuck not? [00:13:39] And calls the phone number displayed on the back. [00:13:43] She talks on the phone to an unnamed operator, and the operator gives her an address and hangs up. [00:13:51] The next morning, hungover as fuck, she showers, drinks some Alka Seltzer and reads the paper where she sees that her network took out an ad to cast for her replacement. And they're looking for females 18 to 30 only. [00:14:11] That would be a hard one to swallow when she's sifting through the rest of her mail. A black plastic, you know, package was in there with the same double yellow arrow arrow symbol that was in the video. And so she opens it up. There's a card inside with a number on it. [00:14:30] She is number 503. [00:14:33] So she goes to the address the operator gave her the night before and finds out that the card is actually a key card to this building in the middle of, like, this abandoned, rundown business park area. It's, like, not in a nice neighborhood. [00:14:49] And it's like a. [00:14:53] You know, it looks like a garage door, but it's really, really small. Like, it's, like, only the width of a doorway, so it's a really small one. And it doesn't go all the way up because it's. [00:15:04] Why would it. So she has to, like, crawl under it. And when she gets inside, there's just empty, you know, units inside, wherever these businesses, I guess, used to be. [00:15:16] And there's a light at the end of the hallway. So she walks towards it. And in the middle of this dilapidated, destroyed, you know, building that she's in is this perfectly sterile, all white room. [00:15:34] In the room, there's a series of numbered lockers. But if you notice, I think there's only two lockers with numbers. [00:15:46] So she finds her locker with the number 503 on it. She scans her keycard and opens a locker to find a box at home. She opens the box. Okay, here's where shit gets real. [00:15:59] So inside the box, there's a clear package. You know, like, she's opening it from. She's looking at it from the top, going all the way down. So the first one on the top says activator with the same green liquid that we saw in the opening scene. And, you know, it's in a needle. So she gets the liquid. [00:16:21] A needle, sewing thread. Like Surgical. [00:16:26] It's kind of. It's not the same thread that we use to, like, sew our clothes. [00:16:32] Scissors. And a piece of, like, a rubber band, you know, a large rubber band that you would wrap around your arm like if you went to the doctor to give blood. [00:16:45] The warning on the box says single use only. Discard after use. [00:16:51] The second layer of the box has another clear package that says stabilizer, other self, containing a seriously large syringe. [00:17:05] If you're a doctor out there, can you just tell me what these things are called? I don't know what these are. I, like. I know what they're for, but I don't know what they're called. [00:17:15] So it's like an empty, you know, cylindrical canister. [00:17:22] There's a needle that you put onto, on top of it that's also in there, like a large one. [00:17:30] And the cylinder that you fill up is numbered one through seven. So it's divided into, like, seven small pieces. [00:17:42] Layer three has a clear package with clear tubing that says switch. [00:17:48] And then at the. You know, underneath that, there's two separate packages filled with this, like, white liquid substance. And it says. One says food matrix and the other one says food, other self. And it's also numbered one through seven because, as we know from the video that we watched, you have to switch every seven days. [00:18:11] So all these things are going to be a 7.4cards at the bottom of the box say you activate only once. [00:18:21] You stabilize every day. [00:18:25] You switch every seven days. Without exception. [00:18:30] Remember, you are one. [00:18:35] So she goes in her bathroom. She gets, you know, completely naked, and she ties off her arm, finds a good vein, and injects herself with the green substance. Now, before she had done this, she spent quite a bit of time examining herself in the mirror. Her body, her face, everything. [00:18:55] And she's like, fuck it, I'm going to do it. So she injects herself. Cool. [00:19:02] What ensues is nothing anyone could have reasonably expected to see on a film screen ever. [00:19:10] So right after she injects herself, she looks in the mirror and she kind of starts to laugh, like, in relief. She was like, you know, laughing, because why was she so nervous? [00:19:19] And as she begins to walk away, she collapses to the floor. [00:19:25] She is writhing in pain. The skin on her back begins to bubble up like soup when you cook it, you know, on. [00:19:33] On a low temperature, and it just kind of like bubbles up and her pupil splits off into two separate pupils. [00:19:45] We even see two eyeballs fighting for room in the same eye socket and straight out of the middle of her spinal column. [00:19:54] Perfect straight line down the back. Her back opens up and out climbs her other self. [00:20:07] What the fuck? Okay, what the fuck? [00:20:14] The other self is covered in a sort of amniotic fluid type substance and goes immediately to look at herself in the mirror, where she sees an incredibly younger and similar looking version of herself. She's so close to the born sexy yesterday trope that it's literally not even funny. [00:20:38] So the other self looks down to Elizabeth's body and her back is still fucking split wide open. So she looks at it, she throws up some of the green liquid and begins to sew Elizabeth's back closed in what is arguably the worst way to sew someone back up ever depicted on a screen. Again, medical professionals, if you're out there, I would love to hear your opinion on this technique, because I find I have seen videos of surgeons, you know, showing how they stitch people or sew people back together, and this is 100% not, not good. These, these two in this movie are the worst medical professionals ever. They're even professionals. They're amateurs and they're horrible. They're not even like. To even call them an amateur would be crazy. They're so bad. [00:21:32] Anyhow, in a vein on her wrist, Elizabeth's wrist, by the way, the other self inserts a tube that will. It's like a feeding tube type thing. It'll sustain Elizabeth each day with food enough for seven days. [00:21:54] She doesn't even bother to make sure that the fucking line was free of air bubbles before inserting the needle. Again, grade A medical. [00:22:02] You know, professionals over here, anyone would be so lucky to be in their career because no one's ever died from that or anything. [00:22:15] The other self takes a shower and she's admiring herself in the mirror when she gets a nosebleed and like a shock of pain, almost like the pain you would get with, like, a cluster headache. [00:22:30] So she opens the medicine cabinet and finds the stabilization kit. I know that this is really graphic, y'all, so stick with me. I'm gonna try to. I really want to only try to explain this in detail once, and I'll refer to it as something not this detailed later. [00:22:50] So she takes the, you know, the stabilization kit with the big, big syringe, you know, or like cylindrical liquid tube holder that was in the box. And she puts the needle onto it. [00:23:09] She inserts that needle into the spine of Elizabeth's back, taking out enough spinal fluid for seven days of stabilization. [00:23:24] I don't even know, like, if that's like a thing like can you. Can you afford to lose that much of it? Like, I don't even know how much is in there. [00:23:34] We see the other self in the living room. She's so limber and flexible and she's stretching and there's still the tainted photo of Elizabeth in the background where she threw the snow globe. [00:23:47] So the other self goes for a walk and she sees a metallic pink aerobic bodysuit and she purchases it. [00:23:55] At the network station, auditions are being held for Elizabeth's replacement. [00:24:00] One girl, very eager to get the part is dismissed and told she'll hear back after a week. And after she leaves, the two men at the table holding the audition say, too bad her boobs aren't in the middle of her face instead of that nose. [00:24:15] Nice. [00:24:18] When the other self comes in, they say everything looks like it's in the right place this time. [00:24:25] And she introduces herself as Sue. [00:24:30] So sue is the other self. Elizabeth is the original part two. Sue in Harvey's office. Harvey lets sue know that she's been hired and she is exactly who they've been looking for. And we need her to be happy. People want to be happy. We need your show to be happy. [00:24:53] And sue knows that she's going to have to be out of her own body pretty much every other week. So she tells Harvey that there's a small scheduling issue and she's going to have to be out of town every other week so that she can take care of her sick mother. [00:25:08] But really it's because she's going to be asleep, you know, with a feeding tube. And Harvey obliges. [00:25:15] From the living room of their apartment, a large billboard can be seen with sue on it, looking beautiful and young as ever. [00:25:26] She comes up with her own choreography which is far more advanced than Elizabeth's ever was. And it's just different. [00:25:33] And so on the seventh day, sue unhooks Elizabeth's feeding tube and to switch each body inserts a needle into their wrist or an IV into their wrist. And with a dual tube, the blood of one goes into the other. [00:25:51] Sue collapses. You know, as soon as this happens. And Elizabeth wakes up sore as fuck. [00:25:58] Sue left her on the tile of the bathroom floor with her freshly sewn together back. Imagine how good that must have felt waking up seven days you laid like that. [00:26:15] Elizabeth makes herself two eggs and eats them like as fast as she possibly can. Like she is drinking fluids ravenously. She hasn't eaten anything real in a week because she's been with the feeding tube. So I can only imagine I would be so fucking hungry. And so she takes a shower and she goes back to the network offices to pick up her things. It just so happens that Harvey is already carrying a box of her stuff. [00:26:45] And he sees her and he walks up to her and he asks her where she's been because they all wanted to grab a drink with her before her departure. But he doesn't even wait for her to answer. And he hands her back the box full of her stuff and makes a note that there is a gift inside from all of the people at the network and leaves. [00:27:05] At home, Elizabeth fills out her calendar with what dates will be her and what dates will be sue and sits down in the living room to watch tv. And pretty much all day, every day for these seven days, she watches TV and does nothing else. [00:27:21] But she gets a note that her refill kit has been delivered to her deposit box. And so she goes to pick it up and comes back to watch more tv. [00:27:32] She goes in on day five to check on sue and sighs when she notices that Stu. That sue still has two more days left in the the food. [00:27:42] It's like she's, like, disappointed and bored. [00:27:48] So then when it's Sue's seven days, she wakes up and she notices that Elizabeth left the TV on and that there's an indent in the chair from where Elizabeth for so long, she's kind of, like, disgusted by it. And so she turns off the TV and decides to get to work. Because we can't have Elizabeth's body laying around on the bathroom floor in the wide open for everyone to see. What if we want to have a boy over? [00:28:16] So using her. [00:28:20] I don't know how she acquired this knowledge, but using her knowledge of DIY construction, she discovers that the one of the walls in the bathroom backs up to a closet. [00:28:34] And so she knocks out that wall in the bathroom to create space to essentially hide whoever's body is not in use at the time so it's not just like on the floor in the bathroom. [00:28:48] And I wonder what you're all thinking out there. If you're thinking, hmm, that's nice, I bet then the body that's resting gets to lay in a bed. You would be fucking wrong. I don't know why these women are not treating each other's bodies, their own body, because they are one. Sorry, with respect, but they're just, like, fucking on the floor. I don't know. [00:29:10] And a neighbor bangs on the door screaming that he has not slept in three days from all the noise that she's making from this Little construction project. [00:29:21] So once sue opens the door, his tone changes and he suddenly loves that there is stuff happening inside the building and offers to come over to help out any day, anytime, day or night. [00:29:34] And sue lets him know that Elizabeth used to be the tenant, but she's a new tenant and that Elizabeth has moved out. [00:29:44] She goes back inside and moves Elizabeth into her new hiding place. [00:29:50] On set of Sue's new show called Pump it Up, she films a new workout series which looks to be an interesting mix of like maybe some aerobic movement, but also dance. And it's very, very sexy, like overly sexy compared to Elizabeth's show, which is like classic aerobics. [00:30:12] She signs off the show by saying, take care of yourself, blowing a kiss at the camera. [00:30:22] She walks down the hallway of the studio and sees that in the same hallway that used to hold all of these wonderful photos of Elizabeth, there is now one photo of Sue. [00:30:35] So she goes home and she gets ready and she puts on what looks to me is like the most impractical and uncomfortable outfit ever. [00:30:51] It's a completely black from head to toe, long sleeve, like leather bodysuit with zippers on the back and the front, and Louboutins. Now she walks in these Louboutins and I can't really get a good view of them on which pair they are, but she walks in these so well, you almost wonder what the shape of her foot actually is and how her foot was constructed, because if you know, you know. [00:31:28] So she's getting ready for a night out. [00:31:33] But when she goes to look at Elizabeth, she couldn't help but notice that it's day seven and Elizabeth is pretty much out of food and sue is pretty much out of stabilizer. And stabilizer, I'm obviously referring to the spinal liquid that sue has to inject herself with every day for seven days from Elizabeth's body. [00:31:58] Before leaving to go out, sue tells Elizabeth not to eat too fast, as if she is awake and can hear or even abide by that command in any way. [00:32:13] And she leaves and goes out with her friends. [00:32:17] After her fun filled night out, she we're back at her apartment and it just so happens that sue brought a boy home. [00:32:26] So they're on the couch, they're making out. Things are starting to get nice and busy when we get a cut to see Elizabeth in the bathroom in her hiding place and her food bag has completely run out. And the bag is shriveling up because there's literally nothing else in it. And at the same time, sue, while making out this guy her nose starts bleeding. Why? Because she needs to stabilize or she needs to switch. [00:32:59] And we get a cut on the screen back to the original directions that say you switch every seven days without exception. [00:33:11] And apparently she wants to this guy so bad, I can't understand why. [00:33:18] To the point that she decides to just go ahead and shove that thing back into Elizabeth's spine and just get a little bit more. Get a little bit more fluid so she can stabilize herself a little bit longer so that she can go have sex with this dude. [00:33:42] Yeah. [00:33:44] Yeah. [00:33:46] I didn't know. I mean, I would not consider a man to be, I like, that important ever. But that's fine. So she does that. She injects herself with it, and she comes back to this guy, and he said, what did you do? You look even more beautiful than before. [00:34:05] Well, I'll tell you what. She's injecting herself with somebody else's spinal fluid. How about that? [00:34:12] He unzips the back of her, you know, outfit. And the audience, as we can see it, as soon as he unzips it, all of these organs start to fall out of her back. And as we see that, cut to the hidey hole in the bathroom where Elizabeth wakes up, and sue is now in there asleep. So I guess I'm glad she got her rocks off. But Elizabeth comes out of the bathroom to find that her apartment is fucking trashed. It's trashed. There's liquor. There's bottles everywhere. There's food, and there's a motorcycle helmet and a note that says, too drunk to take the bike home. Keep an eye on her. Troy with his phone number. [00:34:59] And as she reaches to go touch the sticky note, Elizabeth looks down at her hand and can't help but notice that one, her pointer finger, her index finger, has turned, like, into an old witch hand. Like, the rest of her hand is fine, but just this one finger and the nail are, like, black and rotten. And it looks dead. Like, it looks like a dead appendage. [00:35:31] So she gets freaked out, and she goes into the bathroom and she starts running the finger under water, and she's, like, trying to get it off, thinking that it's something she can remove. Obviously, it's not. She is stuck with this. And this only happened because sue took an extra day, basically, of stabilizer. [00:35:59] You switch every seven days without exception. [00:36:02] She's not playing by the rules. [00:36:06] Elizabeth turns around to look at her back to find that there is a fresh puncture wound. [00:36:13] And she knows that sue took more spinal fluid than she needed to stabilize. [00:36:20] So while she's extraordinarily pissed. She calls the people, the operator of the substance, to complain. [00:36:30] Just trying to act calm. [00:36:33] And she's like, I think there's been a slight misuse of the substance. A few extra hours were accidentally used. [00:36:44] And she describes her finger as being an alteration, and she's looking for a specific procedure to reverse it. And the operator tells her what has been used on one side is already done to the other. There is no going back. [00:37:02] Elizabeth can't believe it. She's like, oh, absolutely not. I don't know what she was thinking. Obviously, she was drunk. [00:37:10] And the operator's like, remember, there is no she and you. You are one. [00:37:15] If you respect the balance, you won't have any more inconveniences. [00:37:24] Elizabeth also can't help but notice that the giant billboard outside of her apartment now has Sue's, you know, sexy body all over it. And that the giant photo that Elizabeth previously had hanging up on her wall in the living room is gone because sue got rid of that. [00:37:48] She. She just. She got rid of it. [00:37:52] While Elizabeth is cleaning up her absolute disarray of an apartment that sue left for her, she. [00:38:02] She catches that the TV is showing a episode of Pump it up, which is Sue's news show. And she is both, like, angered and jealous at the same time and captivated by it. And while she's, you know, in shock just watching this, the creepy, weird neighbor from across the hall comes back and is like, yo, Sue, I just saw you on tv. [00:38:30] I see you, you know, through the peephole there. There's. What about a drink at my place? You don't give private lessons, do you? I want to join your class. [00:38:39] And even though Elizabeth just doesn't say anything, she, you know, like, she's obviously like, what the fuck? This is so bizarre. [00:38:54] He leaves eventually, and she gets noticed that her refill kit has been delivered. So she goes to pick it up, and she gets startled and freaked out while she's in, you know, the area where the kits are kept and the lockers are. And so she gets her box and she leaves. [00:39:15] So she runs into a diner, and she sits down, and she's just frazzled. And, you know, the waitress comes over to take her order, and she gives it. The waitress leaves, and we notice that there's an older man sitting at a table across from Elizabeth at the diner. [00:39:35] And he looks at her and says, it's long, isn't it? [00:39:39] And she's like, huh? [00:39:42] And he says, seven days. [00:39:48] And she looks at his hand and notices that he has the same red circular birthmark that the nurse had at the hospital. [00:40:01] And then he drops his wallet on the floor, and out falls his key card with the number 207. 207 is the only other locker number, only other numbered locker, excuse me, in the facility. [00:40:18] And as he bends over, you can see the scar on his Fine. On his spine from where, you know, this younger nurse came out. [00:40:28] And he starts telling her about, you know, isn't it lonely? Don't you think it is? And she's like, I just don't know what you're talking about. I'm fine. Nothing is wrong. And, you know, eventually he says, it gets harder every time to remember that you still deserve to exist. [00:40:50] This part of yourself, you know, this older version of you, the true you, is still worth something, and you still matter. [00:40:59] And she's so shaken by all of this, she throws money on the counter and leaves. And he screams at her, has she started yet? Eating away at you? [00:41:11] And now this is really freaking her out. So she starts running. She takes off, and as she's running, you know, on her way back home, she ends up running into Mr. Troy. Mr. Troy, the man that apparently stayed the night in her apartment and had sex with Sue. And she recognizes him because of the. [00:41:36] His helmet. [00:41:38] And she just kind of stares at him like, maybe she recognizes him, maybe she doesn't. [00:41:43] And eventually he's like, dude, get the fuck out of my way. I want to leave. [00:41:47] So she runs home and finds in her closet that there are boxes that sue put her stuff in that, you know, say Elizabeth's old shit or Elizabeth's old junk. [00:42:01] And she is frantically looking through these things to find the piece of paper with Fred's phone number on it because she wants to call him. She's gonna take this advice of you still matter, and she's gonna call Fred to go out for a drink. [00:42:16] He is so surprised that she called to ask for a drink. And he's like, I never thought I'd hear from you again. [00:42:26] And, you know, she's like, I've been busy. And then they make plans to go out for, like, a dinner slash drink date. And he's like, all right, great. That sounds awesome. I'll meet you at know, this restaurant at this time. [00:42:45] So she puts on a beautiful dress and, you know, does her makeup and puts on gorgeous black heels, and she puts on long black. Like long black gloves that, like, cover her entire forearm, basically to hide her finger that has now started to essentially, it look it look. It literally Looks like it's, like, near decay. Like, it's like it's so far aged compared to the rest of her. [00:43:19] And she checks on sue, closes the door, and looks at herself in the mirror again. And when she looked at sue, she couldn't help but notice that her lips were shiny. Her, you know, eyelids had some sparkles on them. And so she goes back to the mirror and puts on some more blush and puts on lip lip gloss over her red lipstick. [00:43:42] And it's getting down to crunch time. She really has to leave. And so she puts on her coat and grabs her keys. [00:43:50] And as soon as she grabs her keys, she gets one other really good look again at the fucking billboard with Sue's sexy, you know, body all over it. [00:44:03] And this catches her by surprise. She's, like, really focusing on it more than she did the time before. [00:44:11] So back to the bathroom mirror we go. [00:44:14] She now has decided that her dress is showing too much cleavage and she is going to wear a scarf around her neck to conceal some of her chest. And then she decides that the lips are too much and that she's going to take that off. [00:44:31] Then she decides she needs some more makeup. So she puts concealer on, and she's frantically going against the clock. She puts on red lips again. No more lip gloss this time. Lots of blush to add color back to the face. And is fucking with her hair. She's not satisfied with the way that she looks, and she's growing frustrated, so she makes another attempt to leave. She puts on her coat, she grabs her burst. She gets to the doorknob, and as soon as she goes to turn it to leave, she literally sees her reflection in the doorknob. [00:45:12] And she decides that somehow this, you know, convex doorknob is somehow actually the way that she looks. So back into the bathroom, and this time, she's fucking pissed. And so she is trying to, you know, get the makeup off her face by violently rubbing a cotton round all over it. Red lipstick is smeared everywhere. She's ripping at her eyelashes. She's running her hands all over her face. Just absolutely infuriated with the way that she looks. [00:45:46] And wouldn't you know it, she never goes. She never leaves. [00:45:50] She. [00:45:52] She leaves Fred at the restaurant. He's texting her, you know, you're running late. Everything okay? [00:46:00] I just got here. Xyz. And she just lays, you know, on her bed and doesn't go. [00:46:11] But then she decides, hmm, if we're truly one, what if I just start fucking eating? [00:46:25] Cut now to Sue. Sue is back on Set of Pump it up, and she's going to be filming another episode. [00:46:33] And in the middle of her filming, she does this move where basically it, like, her legs are straight and she's, like, basically bending all the way down. Her legs are, like, slightly spread apart. And so her head's between her legs, her legs are straight. And then she feels. And we, as the audience see something bubble, like, and protrude from the side of her butt cheek. [00:47:03] But then when she turns around to look at it, there's nothing there. [00:47:08] And she's like, oh, sorry, I just got distracted. Like, let's. Let's keep going. [00:47:12] And then someone comes down from the control room and says, oh, sorry, we have to, you know, check the cameras again, because the camera caught something. So as they're going to, like, replay the footage of, you know, these movements that she had just done to find out what it was that the camera caught, she decides she's going to get her robe and go back to her dressing room. [00:47:37] She wants to cover up her body, basically. [00:47:40] And while they're still analyzing the footage, she leaves before we even get to see if it was captured on camera at all. But when she gets to her dressing room, she sees that that lump is definitely there. And so she starts squeezing it and moving it, and she gets it all the way up into her hip. [00:48:00] And then she continues to move it all the way until it reaches her belly button. And then this mass inside, she reaches into her belly button and pulls it out, and it's a fucking, like, chicken drumstick. [00:48:20] And then she wakes up. [00:48:23] That was just a dream. She's back on the floor. She actually just woke up and switched with Elizabeth, who is, like, sweaty and has, like, grease all over her face. And so sue goes out into the living room to find, literally, plates and plates of food that have just been completely consumed by sue right before they switched back, and she is pissed. [00:48:50] So now Sue's on the phone with the operator, and she says, this is not working. The balance is not working. I barely even have time to enjoy myself. [00:48:59] And she's eating and this and this and this. And the operator just reminds her, like, there is no she and you. [00:49:09] You are one. So she hangs up the phone. [00:49:13] Back at the actual film studio, she shows up to find that her set of Pump it up is being torn down. [00:49:21] And one of the producers comes in to tell her that Harvey wants to see her in his office right this second. And she thinks it's bad news that she's getting fired, but actually, she has been given the opportunity to host the network's New Year's Eve show. So it's a pretty big deal. [00:49:40] So then, because she knows this is going to be such a big, you know, a large amount of work, she actually just starts not switching, not switching at all with Elizabeth. And just continuously, each day goes in and gets more and more of her spinal fluid to stabilize herself so that she doesn't have to switch back. And she's like, you know, you of all people know that if you don't open the door when opportunity knocks, like, you may not get another chance. You of all people know this. [00:50:16] Every time she opens the door to go back to get more fluid from Elizabeth spine, there is an abscess that has grown like a sore that has grown so large that she can barely insert the needle into it anymore because it's so disgusting and it smells bad. And, you know, she's doing all these photo shoots and, like, they're going to be on the COVID of Vogue. And so, you know, sue is just not really thinking that anything bad is happening. [00:50:46] But the next time they switch back, Elizabeth is in for a rude awakening. [00:50:53] Elizabeth has aged so rapidly in the time that, you know, sue was taking advantage of her that her foot is now looking the same as her finger. Her arm is looking the same as the finger. She has the biggest sore ever on her back from how many times that needle has been injected. Her hair is completely gray. Her face has been wrinkled and aged. And she calls the operator again, and she's like, this girl is not respecting the balance. She is taking advantage of me. Like, this is. This is too much. And the operator is like, look, if you're not satisfied with the experience, you can just go back to being on your own and we can stop. [00:51:43] And so she says, okay, well, will it go back to the way it was before? Like, will I be the way I was before? [00:51:51] And he says, no, because what's already been done is done. But if you want to go back to just being you, you can. [00:52:01] At this point, she is like, you know what? No, actually, I can't stop because I, you know, I can't accept that things won't go back to the way they were before. And now sue is this, like, big time star. She's on this billboard and she keeps looking at this billboard and she's like, okay, I don't want to stop, but the balance has to be respected. [00:52:27] And the operator tells her, so respect it, because they're supposed to be the same person, right? [00:52:36] So she's sitting in the chair Watching tv. And at this point, because of the way her leg is, it's sort of deformed. She. [00:52:46] Her left leg has bulges that are popping out from basically all sides, top, bottom. [00:52:56] And she wants to stand up because she remembers while she's watching TV that there was a gift that was included in the box of her belongings that she picked up from Harvey. So she wants to get this gift, and in order to stand up to get it, she has to pop her kneecap back into socket. [00:53:20] It is just as graphic as you think it is. But determined to move, she gets up and she goes to the bookshelf and gets this gift. And she opens it. And essentially it is a book. Harvey tells her, you know, it was something to keep her busy. And she opens it up and it is a French Cuisine Cookbook. [00:53:43] 26 great recipes from French Chefs. [00:53:48] So she decides, oh yeah, 26 great recipes. That sounds awesome. And if you know anything about French food, you may or may not be aware that everything involves butter and a lot of it. And the food is very rich. It's my favorite food in the entire universe. And so she decides to make as many recipes as she possibly can from this cookbook. And she does so while there on the tv. In the background is an interview that sue did on a late night television show. And every word that sue says just pisses her off even more. [00:54:27] And, you know, the interviewer is asking her things like, tell us your life story. And you know, obviously she doesn't really have one because she was birthed out of Elizabeth's back. And she's like, you know, I'm just from this small town of Indiana. You've never heard of it. I don't even know if you could call it a town, maybe a village or a farm. [00:54:46] And everything she's saying is pissing Elizabeth the fuck off. [00:54:52] So then the interviewer asked her, well, it's no secret that you replaced Elizabeth Sparkle. And you came on here and fucking just shook everything up. [00:55:06] Were you like a fan of hers? [00:55:09] And sue is like, well, I. At first she's shocked. She's like, I can't actually really say that I ever watched Elizabeth's show because we're not exactly from the same generation. [00:55:24] But you must admit it was a bit old fashioned. And she calls it Jurassic Fitness, saying that it needed a change. [00:55:35] She goes on to say that her mom was a huge fan of Elizabeth Sparkle. And every day, Rain or Shine, Sparkle youe Life was on the TV in their house. And she says, so I guess I kind of grew up with Elizabeth, whether I really liked it or not. So the interviewer says, oh, we ask, you know, everybody this question. We have one final question, and would you share a beauty secret with us? Something that helps you stay so young and beautiful? And Elizabeth is like, oh, my God, why don't you just tell them what your little beauty secret is? Because obviously, the secret is that she's stealing the life out of Elizabeth's body. [00:56:15] And. But she doesn't say that. She says that her secret is basically that she just tries to be herself and be grateful for all that she has. And this sends Elizabeth into such a rage, she starts throwing eggs at the TV screen with sue on it. And she starts throwing eggs at the window, you know, kind of roughly where the billboard peeks through. And she actually just completely covers the entire window with newspaper. [00:56:54] So sue wakes up, and she is like, you have to fucking control yourself. And she goes into. Because the kitchen is trash. There's food fucking everywhere. And so she goes back into the little room where they're keeping these bodies of each other, and she is like, you're fat. You're gross. You're old. And she starts taking every single bit of fluid out of Elizabeth's spine, filling it up with. Filling jars with it, like, as much as she possibly can. She's like, I am done with this. I don't want to clean up your mess anymore. [00:57:33] And the sore on her back is so big, like, I can't. I could barely look at it. It's so huge. [00:57:40] But she's punishing Elizabeth for her behaviors, like, of her eating habits. [00:57:48] So then she does, you know, all these photo shoots for, like, the New Year's Eve show. And the billboard of her and her aerobics outfit gets replaced with the billboard of her in her. In a dress that she's going to be wearing on the New Year's Eve show. And it says, new Year's Eve show tomorrow. [00:58:05] And she's looking at it, and she now has a very sexy model boyfriend who's, you know, staying there. [00:58:15] And so there's a. There's a bouquet of flowers, you know, on the table, very reminiscent of the ones that were there or whenever Elizabeth got fired. And it says. The note says, break a leg. They're going to love you. [00:58:31] Not, you know, you were amazing, but they're going to love you. [00:58:39] And so she goes, now her boyfriend is like, are you gonna come to bed? And she's like, yep, I'll be there in a second. So she goes into the bathroom so she can get more spinal fluid to stabilize herself. And it appears that sue has been picking up all the, you know, packages of food and the. [00:58:57] From the lockers because she's just been giving the food. All the food. They're not switching at all. She's been giving it all to Elizabeth. And so she goes in to get, you know, one serving of the spinal fluid, and there's none left. It's just brown liquid. [00:59:18] And the New Year's Eve show is tomorrow. [00:59:22] So she calls the operator again, and he says. She's like, this is an emergency. Like, there's no more stabilizer fluid. This is. This is unacceptable. Like, her nose is bleeding. She's like, I have to stabilize myself right this second. And he's like, the only way to get more fluid is to generate more, which means you have to switch. Every time you switch, it regenerates the fluid production. [00:59:53] And she's like, I can't switch. Like, I really can't. Not right now, because I have this show tomorrow. And the operator's like, look, there's no other option. [01:00:02] So she collapses on the floor because, again, she needs to stabilize. Well, actually, she needs to fucking switch back into Elizabeth is what she needs to do. [01:00:11] So she crawls from the kitchen all the way into the bathroom, where she is going to try to not fully switch, but because she can't really grab things, she's trying to get the IV with the double tubing, you know, and she's so weak at this point that, like, she's making a ton of noise, like, dropping things and everything. And her boyfriend is like, oh, something is wrong. I have to get up and come help you. [01:00:43] So he approaches the bathroom door, and, yeah, he approaches the bathroom door. It's kind of cracked open at this point. [01:00:57] Now, they installed a lock sue did whenever she did this little renovation project of hers. And we see him walking down the hallway with cuts of an. Severely, severely. Like, it looks like she's. It looks like Elizabeth is rotting from the inside out almost in certain parts of her body. [01:01:23] And so she's standing up, and she is so weak. She walks towards the door and slams it before he can come inside. [01:01:33] And he sees that there's blood on the floor. And he goes, are you just cranky because of your lady business? [01:01:41] Like, as if it's period blood. [01:01:46] Like, it's like, what the. No. [01:01:51] And then we see Elizabeth look at herself in the mirror. She can no longer stand upright. She has this huge mass that has formed in her back. She is hunched over. She has almost no hair left. Her teeth are rotten. [01:02:09] And finally, she's had enough of this dude banging on the door. And she's like, get the out. Seriously, get out. [01:02:17] She has red splotches all over her skin. She has areas of exposed, open skin. She is throwing up, like, a foam. She. [01:02:29] She's dying. She's dying from the inside out. [01:02:34] So he grabs his clothes, he leaves, and she makes a break for it down the hallway. [01:02:42] And she. She literally can barely walk. Like, there's not. I mean, she's. She's dying. And so she picks up the phone, and she calls the operator, and she's like, hey, look, it's 5:03. I want to stop. [01:03:01] And the operator says, are you sure? Because once you stop, you can't go back. And she's like, nope, I want to stop. I want to stop. I want to stop right now. [01:03:11] And so the operator says, we'll deliver. And she throws the phone down. And watching her maneuver herself around the apartment at this point is just horrifically sad. And in this state that she's in right now, she ends up finding where sue placed the oversized, like, photo of herself, that of Elizabeth that, you know, she threw the snow globe at originally in the beginning of the film, and brings it back into the living room, and she's just looking at it. And the next day, the final kit has been delivered. [01:03:53] So she puts on her clothes, she covers up her entire body from head to toe. And as soon as she opens her door to leave her apartment to go pick up the final kit, the neighbor opens the door, and she's like, get the fuck out of my way. Go away. And he is freaked out by her appearance and immediately goes back into his apartment and slams the door. And she walks furiously, almost running to her locker to pick up her final kit. And this box is really small. [01:04:30] So she comes back home. She angrily is dragging Sue's body through the apartment into the living room by her foot, not caring if she, you know, smacks her head or whatever. [01:04:45] She opens up the box, and it says, there's a note that says, we're sorry you didn't appreciate or you're not satisfied with your experience with the substance. And there's a large needle in there with a black liquid, and the syringe on the needle says, termination. So she takes the needle and goes to kind of find the right place to put it. [01:05:12] And as soon as she's getting ready to, like, jab this needle into Sue's chest, she hears a voice that's like, are you sure you want to terminate you'll be on your own. Just your own. [01:05:26] And she kind of has these second thoughts, but they're all in her head. And she basically yells out for them to shut the fuck up. She jabs this needle into Sue's chest and starts pushing the black liquid inside of it. [01:05:42] And just as she's almost done, you know, injecting all of the liquid, she looks over on the table and sees the bouquet of flowers with the note that says, they're gonna love you. [01:05:53] And she actually removes the needle from Sue's body and is like, I can't do this. [01:06:03] I can't do this. She didn't complete the termination, and she says, I need you, sue, because I hate myself. So you gotta. You know, you gotta get ready. Cause it's our big night. [01:06:18] It's our big night tonight. You're gonna be hosting the New Year's Eve show. They're gonna love you so much. [01:06:23] So she starts to do, like, CPR compressions on Sue's chest. And she's like, look, you're the only lovable part of me. You have to come back. [01:06:35] And as she's pumping her chest, sue starts bleeding, you know, quite a bit from her nose. [01:06:44] So Elizabeth goes back into the bathroom and finds the tube with the IVs to switch. [01:06:51] And they begin the process to switch. [01:06:57] And she's, like, begging, you know, for sue to wake up. At this point, she puts the IV in, you know, into her wrist like she normally would, but no blood is coming out. So she jams the IV into Sue's heart. [01:07:15] And now sue and Elizabeth are awake at the same exact time. [01:07:26] They are looking at each other. They are freaked the fuck out. They are both. They are both interacting in the world, having a conscious experience at the same time. This is the first time. [01:07:41] And at first, sue is, like, confused and a little startled. But then she sees the needle on the floor with some of the fluid still in it from the termination injection. [01:07:51] And then she becomes irate. [01:07:57] She is chasing Elizabeth around the apartment. She is punching her. She kicks Elizabeth into, like, the. This, you know, humongous photo of herself that she brought back into the living room and shatters the glass. She tries to strangle her. And Elizabeth gets hold of a vase nearby and smashes it on Sue's head to, you know, get away, at least for a second. [01:08:23] So sue chases her down the hall, and they end up back in the bathroom. I swear to God, over half the movie takes place in the fucking bathroom. And sue is like a superhuman at this point when, you know, you compare her to Elizabeth. So Elizabeth goes into the bathroom. Sue is still on the other side of the door. [01:08:43] And even though Elizabeth locked the door, sue just starts kicking and kicking and kicking the door until she literally, you know, she breaks it down. [01:08:58] And when she does, she, of course, makes impact with Elizabeth, who, you know, is literally, at this point, just struggling to be alive at this point. Like, I don't. It's. It's so odd. [01:09:16] Sue kicks her, and Elizabeth hits her head on the sink. And then sue picks her up and forces her. Forces Elizabeth to look at herself in the mirror. [01:09:30] And then she takes Elizabeth's head and starts smashing it into the bathroom mirror as hard as she can, as many times as she can, until Elizabeth collapses on the floor. Just her own blood is literally everywhere in this bathroom. [01:09:47] And she crawls out of the bathroom. She is so close to death at this point. And she crawls her way out of the bathroom, down the hall, all the way back in into the living room area. And sue is just on a vengeful power trip at this point, for some reason. [01:10:05] So she kicks Elizabeth so hard that she flies across the room and lands on a, you know, huge glass coffee table, which, of course, subsequently shatters. And then sue starts to kick Elizabeth in her torso so hard and so much that there's so much blood coming out of Elizabeth's body that Sue's, you know, hair, face, and top half of her body are literally just covered in Elizabeth's blood. And she kicks her until she dies. [01:10:44] The screen flashes. Remember, you are one. [01:10:50] But sue, you know, is alive and Elizabeth is dead. [01:10:57] Obviously, after seeing what she's done, sue is horrified at the damage and the mess that she's caused with her white carpet and all that's now obviously no longer white with all the blood all over it, because, you know, that's not coming out. [01:11:13] Well, now it's time for Sue's big night, so she needs to get the fuck over it. But she's obviously still a little bit freaked out by all that she's just done, and she's feeling a little weird, so she heads down to the TV station and gets her dress on and her hair and makeup done and has flashbacks of Elizabeth's dead body. And in her dressing room, you know, where they're getting ready, she's kind of like, look, I need a second just for myself. [01:11:41] So she leaves, and she goes to, like, her own, like, a restroom that she finds, like, in a separate part of the hallway so she can just be on her own for a second. And she goes to the mirror and she's like, barely standing upright. She's collapsing almost. And she leans over into the sink and her tooth falls out. [01:12:04] Her tooth literally falls out into the sink. [01:12:10] Remember, you're one, right? [01:12:14] So if Elizabeth is dead, how the are you still here? [01:12:21] Obviously upset and freaked out. She keeps looking at herself in the mirror. And this one tooth is just like. I mean, it's like it's a canine, so it's right in the front. You can't miss it. It's not a good look. [01:12:35] So she sets that tooth down and reaches in and just starts pulling on the rest of them. [01:12:46] And she pulls. She just keeps pulling out teeth and it hurts and they're just falling out. Like, this is not something that you could just do on your own, you know, right now in your apartment with just your fingers. Like, this is something that, you know, a doctor would need to do. And then someone comes and knocks on the door because of course they need to see how she looks on stage in the stage lighting. But she's having an absolute breakdown in the bathroom, pulling her teeth out right now. [01:13:14] And then she remembers that the activator, the green substance, is still in the apartment. [01:13:28] So she wrenches out her bloody mouth and sneaks her way out of the studio. And as she's trying to leave, of course people see her. They know who she is. And Harvey and his team entourage of network executives is there, and he's like, you know, look, let me introduce you to some of our shareholders. They've been dying to meet you. They love you. And she's kind of like, what the fuck do I do? I can't open my mouth to talk. So I just pulled out three teeth. And Harvey's like, are you okay? [01:14:02] So first she shakes her head and he's like, okay, yeah. Then if you're okay, then smile. [01:14:10] And at first she, like, doesn't know what to do, but she gives them a closed mouth smile and he's like, this is what we want tonight. You know, pretty girls should always smile and lucky distraction, because as you know, the tension is literally so sharp. [01:14:32] The burlesque type dancers are coming onto the stage and running through the hallway, and they're topless and they're wearing thongs and they're beautifully made up and they have feathers and, you know, it's a welcome distraction. So she flees and goes home to get the rest of the activator that she kept, even though she was supposed to throw it away while she's in the elevator trying to leave the studio. She goes to push a button on the elevator, and it literally breaks the fingernail off of the bed. [01:15:08] Like, she literally just pulls the whole nail off. [01:15:13] She. [01:15:14] She's rotting as she's freaked out by her fingernail. Her ear falls off. [01:15:23] So, yeah, so at this point, we're missing three teeth and an ear and a fingernail. [01:15:31] And this dude gets into the elevator with her, although she's trying to leave by herself. And so she holds the ear back up to her head, but she's clearly not okay. [01:15:43] She finds the activator, she jams it into her arm, and she's like, I need a better version of myself right now. This has to work. [01:15:54] People don't listen in these movies. I don't understand. [01:15:59] So she, you know, does what Elizabeth did the first time. Elizabeth activated and goes down on the floor, collapses. She. [01:16:11] You know, instead, though, instead of us seeing two pupils in, you know, the eye or two eyeballs fighting for the one socket, we literally see, like, 10. [01:16:27] She births out of her spinal column a new person. And this is something that you can almost barely describe as a person. [01:16:41] This is what appears to be, like, an infinite number of new other selves that have combined together. They. She has one eye. [01:16:53] The spine is located, like, basically where her butt should be. She doesn't have ears. She has two strands of hair. And Elizabeth's face, her original face is stuck in the back of this newly formed creature with an arm coming out of it. And it is just not. [01:17:20] It's barely human. [01:17:23] It's barely human. [01:17:28] She has a flashback of her audition where the two guys were like, oh, it looks like everything is in the right place this time. What's your name? [01:17:37] And in the mirror, she can't even speak, hardly. She. She wants to say, I'm sue, but she can't. She cannot talk. And she throws up all of, you know, basically the green fluid. And now we are in part three. Monstro. Elisa Sue. [01:18:02] Yeah. [01:18:06] The Monstro actually takes a look outside of the window and sees the billboard of sue in, you know, the New Year's Eve advertisement with Elizabeth's body still there on the floor. Floor in the living room, bloody and dead. And so the monster goes into the bedroom to attempt to put the dress back on. It's just not working. There's literally, like, body parts or organs, like, falling off of this. This structure. And, like, the dress is ripped. It doesn't fit it. [01:18:44] She turns on the curling iron to, like, try to curl the two strands of hair that she has. And as soon as she does it. It just. [01:18:53] The hair just breaks off. She doesn't. It doesn't have ears. The monster doesn't have ears. And. But she has these earrings that she was supposed to wear. And so she takes one and tries to basically jam it into a piece of the skin, you know, on the side of the head where an ear might be to see if it stays. And it kind of does. [01:19:19] At this point, we're just. [01:19:23] It looks like, you know, a patchwork creature. There's eyes, you know, one eye in the front, one eye on the back of the head. There's no ears. There's sections of teeth that have formed, like, in the chest area, and then, like, one, you know, small area of teeth inside where the mouth would normally be. Like, this is just the worst possible case scenario for everyone involved. [01:19:57] So the monster takes a knife and cuts into the shattered photo frame of the, you know, super big picture of Elizabeth and actually cuts the face out of the photo and glues it onto its own face and puts, like, red lipstick on it. And this thing is. This monster is, like, not even close to, like, being as mobile right as Elizabeth and Sue were. Like, it can barely walk. It takes a long time. And whenever it arrives back at the studio, the producer is like, you need to hurry up. Like, where have you been? We're starting in five minutes. Like, what the fuck? [01:20:59] And as this monster enters the hall of the studio, all of the people that work there are lined up on both sides of it with her walking through it with this giant, you know, Elizabeth Sparkle face taped on. And they're like, you're irreplaceable. Everybody's gonna love you. [01:21:21] You're so beautiful. [01:21:24] This, that, and the other. And back in the hallway where, you know, it used to be lined with photos of Elizabeth, there's now just the photo of Su and then her New Year's Eve advertisement photo. And that's it. [01:21:37] As the tension in the audience is building for her to make her big appearance, Harvey makes it a point to say, she is my most beautiful creation. [01:21:48] So the show starts. We have these, you know, burlesque Vegas style girl dancers. And they're on the air. Everyone in the audience is there. The seats are filled. [01:22:00] Everyone's excited. There's even a little girl who's, like, dressed up kind of like Elizabeth was in the advertisement for the show. [01:22:09] And everyone is waiting for her to come out so that they can, you know, see that they want to see the show, but they're not going to start it without her. So as this monster comes out onto the stage, there's an organ dragging behind it. [01:22:36] I mean, it can barely get there. It's just. [01:22:40] It's awful. [01:22:41] And as the stage lights turn on, everyone is looking at this monster in just absolutely horror. [01:22:54] And the girls, the dancers behind her, like, trying not to appear. Like, they notice what's happening, or maybe they can't even actually see because the lights are so bright. [01:23:08] But she approaches the microphone, and the room is dead silent. [01:23:15] This monster says in the microphone, like, I'm so happy to be here with you tonight. I've missed you all so much. [01:23:24] And then the, you know, photo of Elizabeth's face that was glued on falls, and we are exposed to the actual face. And everyone is just like. [01:23:39] I mean, there's. There's no words to describe what they're seeing. [01:23:45] And live on stage, right then and there, out of the side of the head, a. [01:23:54] A boob literally breaks through the skin and pops all the way through, like, nipple and all. And it's attached to, you know, this long organ, organic string. And some blood falls out. And literally, it looks like the Eraserhead baby when the woman from the radiator is singing and stomping on it. [01:24:20] And finally, people in the audience are, like, freaking the fuck out. They're screaming. They're like, that's the monster. There it is. Somebody shoot the monster. And everyone is just in a state of panic, and they're like, somebody has to shoot it. Somebody has to kill it. And she gets on the mic and she tries to say, like, don't be scared. It's still me. [01:24:45] And Elizabeth's face on the back, her actual face is like, no, it's me. [01:24:51] I mean, people rush the stage. They're pushing, you know, her around, the. Pushing the monster around. They're trying to. [01:25:01] I don't even know. They're angry at it in a way. Like, they're frightened and angry, calling it a freak, calling her a freak, calling her a monster. And eventually, she is pushed down, and she's like, look, it's me. [01:25:17] Just me and the light. You know, the studio light is shining bright on the face, and it's just. [01:25:28] It's horrible. She stands up and she's like, I'm the same. [01:25:32] I'm still the same. And someone swings like a crowbar. [01:25:37] Literally, it decapitates, I guess you could say the monster. [01:25:46] And that didn't really matter because a whole new head emerges from the neck and shoulder area with so many faces on it. It looks like it's very reminiscent of that movie society if, you know, you know, and then from one of the arms that was on the monster's body, the wrist and hands snap off and literally blood is just drenching, you know, the audience and everybody in the room. Like, there's so much blood. Like, they're. They're covered. [01:26:27] Absolutely covered. And we hear, you know, she's thinking back to. And having the memory of her audition and of the guys saying, like, it's too bad her boobs weren't in the middle of her face. And then she remembers Harvey saying, you know, pretty girl should always smile. And there is just blood everywhere, literally everywhere. [01:26:51] It looks like Dead Alive. [01:26:55] That's what we're working with. Like a modern, updated, you know, film that had a budget version of Dead Alive. [01:27:06] It's. It's raining blood. There's no other way to describe it. [01:27:13] And as she, you know, exits the stage and she's walking through the hall where, you know, the two photos of sue are, she is still. Blood is still just spraying from the body. Like, absolutely. The walls, when they leave, are coated, and the floors are coated with blood. It's very shining, esque. [01:27:39] Then this monster makes its way outside and in a hurried frenzy, is trying to run. And one of the legs literally just, like, explodes. So then it falls, because it had two legs. Now it doesn't. And whenever this happens, the body of the monster makes impact with the sidewalk or the concrete, and it completely shatters. [01:28:12] And all that remains is just, like, a small portion of it that is, you know, using organs and organic tissue as, you know, its appendages, and is crawling. [01:28:27] It looks like a starfish. It's, like, crawling on the sidewalk. And it's just the original Elizabeth's face with this tissue surrounding it, and it crawls all the way to her Hollywood star. [01:28:45] Once it gets there, it looks up at the sky and sees, like, glitter falling from the sky. And Elizabeth's face is smiling, remembering, you know, all the people in the hallway that were saying, we love you. You're so beautiful. You're irreplaceable. [01:29:05] And then this mass of Elizabeth dissolves completely. And all that's left is just the blood that remained from it on the. [01:29:18] On her Hollywood star. And then a street sweeper buffer comes through and wipes up all the blood. [01:29:29] And it's like it never happened. [01:29:32] It's like none of it ever happened at all. [01:29:36] And the star is so, you know, it's faced wear and tear obviously has cracks in it, but it's still there. [01:29:46] And that is where the film ends. So I know that was a lot. I'm very sorry. I would like to say that, you know, it was a slightly more uplifting film. But of course it's not so. [01:30:08] But with all that I've just told you, I'm sure you're dying to know what does it all mean? And for that purpose, I am here. [01:30:18] One thing that this film did really well was, like I said already, like just the complete overwhelming aspect of it. At all times, it is overwhelming to the audience. From every single angle, every single sound that you would expect to normally be like small or subtle in another film are maximized to the extreme in this film. And people seemed not to really like this. [01:30:50] I happen to really love this. [01:30:53] If you're gonna go for it, just fucking go for it. [01:30:58] I think this is especially true when it comes to the theme of the film. I mean, overall, this is obviously on the surface a film about aging. [01:31:08] But I think what is misunderstood about it is that this is satire. [01:31:19] Okay? [01:31:21] That's why it's so in your face. [01:31:24] I often find that satire is far too much in my face and it's spelled out, but here I don't feel that way. And people seem to really have an issue with this. They didn't want the thematic elements to be so obvious. And for what reason I truly don't understand when everything keeps. When everything is hidden in a film and not spelled out at all, people say that the film is pretentious and complain about having to think about a film to understand it. [01:31:56] When the theme is apparent and obvious, people complain that they didn't have the opportunity to think enough. So what the hell do you people want? [01:32:05] Have you ever heard of having an open mind? [01:32:10] And then, because people can never really seem to stop bitching about something, I found this article posted by the Cut. Again, it'll be linked below just like everything else is linked in my show notes. [01:32:24] The Cut. The article complains that Demi Moore isn't old enough or looks aged enough to need a younger, more desirable self. [01:32:37] They claim that having someone as beautiful as her playing the older self doesn't sell the premise. [01:32:47] The article goes on to say, quote, the substance hinges on the audience taking as a given that nothing but peak high assed, smooth limbed perfection is an acceptable look for any woman. But a few more visible wrinkles or lines or neck flesh would have sold the price premise much better. [01:33:09] They go on to describe that the progression of Elizabeth's descent into disfiguration and extraordinarily fast aging and even dying process was too much it would have maybe been better if the progression was more subtle. [01:33:24] Maybe a few gray hairs or some forehead wrinkles. [01:33:31] The article then continues to say that the filmmakers are sending out the message that the process of aging naturally is disgusting and that the audience agrees. [01:33:45] I love that people have opinions and that they're able to express those opinions, but I just want to say that this article sure as fuck does not speak for me. [01:34:01] Tell me you missed the point entirely without telling me that you missed the point. Seriously, I want to make sure that I saw the same film that the writers of this article saw. So I watched it again and again. I still don't see at all how their argument holds up. Elizabeth didn't age naturally at all. [01:34:24] Literally at all. So you're telling me that you watched the same film I did and you said that the filmmakers are saying that aging naturally is disgusting when in fact she didn't age naturally in any way. [01:34:40] She at one point was aging naturally and then started taking the substance after that. Everything is not natural. She aged completely unnaturally. [01:34:51] Sue took such egregious advantage of Elizabeth to the point that she literally ran out of spinal fluid to give to her, thus causing her to age and decay at a rapid pace almost to the point of death. [01:35:08] And there is a point here, so let's talk more about it. [01:35:14] An Ipsos article titled Most Americans experience feeling dissatisfied with how their body looks from time to time, including 2 in 5 who feel feel this way whenever they look in the mirror states that 79% of Americans report feeling unhappy with their body at times and only 21% are never dissatisfied with their body. [01:35:37] Let that sink in a little bit further. The survey results claim that 27% of people dislike how they look when they try on old clothes. 14% are unhappy when comparing themselves to photos of others on social media. [01:35:54] 37% are unhappy when looking at themselves in the mirror. 32% are unhappy in a bathing suit. I mean, these are real self reported responses. How could you almost not be disappointed in how you look when you're constantly consuming media and comparing yourself to others? [01:36:16] Like, what are the. What do they think? [01:36:24] For me, this film is about aging. Like, no doubt about it. But with what I just told you about these survey results and what I'm about to say, I want to take it a step further. [01:36:38] Okay, let's just say you're 21 years old and you have not had a single wrinkle or line or weight issue ever. Let's imagine you're perfect. People show surgeons photos of you when you, when they go in for a consult, they literally want to look like you. [01:36:59] Everyone objectively has agreed that you are perfect. [01:37:06] But deep down you're unhappy with a few things. Maybe you don't like your lips or you would like to have a different shape of teeth, or your back hurts because your breasts are so large that your shoulders can barely support the weight. [01:37:19] You too feel that there are things you would like to either improve upon or change to feel better upon, to feel better in your own skin. Everyone deserves to feel good in their own skin, in my opinion. [01:37:35] This is Demi Moore's character, right? [01:37:42] She's perfect. [01:37:46] Now, whether or not the things that, you know, people were saying to her were a delusion of her mind because, you know, she seems to be a somewhat unreliable narrator as the film goes on. But she also, in a sense, don't jump down my throat, okay? I'm just saying, in a sense, Demi Moore as a human has never ever been ugly, not once in her life. And as she ages, she literally has only gotten more beautiful, I think. But she too has had cosmetic procedures done on herself. It is impossible to be perfectly happy with every single aspect of yourself. [01:38:25] I think we can all agree. [01:38:29] Enter medical tourism. [01:38:34] Medical tourism is when people go to other countries specifically for a medical treatment of some kind. [01:38:41] Cosmetic and medical tourism is almost entirely a price driven phenomenon because insurance companies don't provide coverage for elective cosmetic procedures. [01:38:56] The American Society of Plastic Surgeons has a briefing paper about this very topic and they report that there has been a large increase in the growth of this type of tourism in the last decade. [01:39:08] These, you know, medical tourism. There's companies that, you know, sell these like packages and they'll offer to provide an all inclusive experience that's marketed as a vacation package that includes a cosmetic procedure completed at a private hospital with highly trained or credentialed medical staff. [01:39:34] Obviously there are a million excellent and qualified medical practitioners all over the world, including outside of the U.S. i know that's hard for people to imagine. [01:39:47] What is troublesome, however, is that we often cannot validate the credentials of these medical practitioners ourselves. And so patients put themselves into unnecessary and risky situations and have the procedures performed in non accredited surgical facilities. So maybe you opt for one of these procedures to save money. But what happens when you're sick with hate over your results and you want a revision surgery and your surgeon is in Turkey? [01:40:19] Do you spend all the money to go back and do it all over again for a revision or do you just see a surgeon in the U.S. you know, that you found to do the revision surgery for you and thus end up paying more to have your original procedure fixed than you ever could have imagined if you had just done it the first time with an accredited, highly trained professional. [01:40:47] And isn't that kind of what the substance is? [01:40:51] It's a risky form of. [01:40:55] It's a risky medical, you know, it's not a procedure necessary. Well, maybe, maybe you could call it a procedure. I don't know if I necessarily agree with that. But what I do know is that she didn't go to like a plastic surgeon and have a consultation and, you know, be like, I'm unhappy with this. Maybe we can change this so I feel a little bit better. No, she literally found a black market product and decided to self administer and then couldn't go back. [01:41:35] She could not revert back to her original self. There was no way. [01:41:43] Is this not a similarity to medical tourism and cosmetic tourism? [01:41:50] I mean, every single time, you know, we see the perfect example of it. Whenever Elizabeth tries to go on the date with Fred, she literally can't make herself go because every time she turns around, she sees sue on a billboard or Sue's body, you know, lying in resting state in the bathroom, or, you know, she looks down at the doorknob and sees her reflection and hates it. Like there's not even a way for her to be happy. She's so uncomfortable comparing herself to this other version. She so uncomfortable she literally cannot even go out and have a drink with someone. [01:42:37] And Fred is like the guiding light in all of this. He still thinks she's the most beautiful girl that's ever lived. And all he wants is to take her on a date and spend time with her. He is infatuated with her. He thinks that she is perfect. [01:42:52] Why doesn't she think that she's perfect? [01:42:56] Well, she doesn't think she's perfect because none of us think we're perfect. [01:43:01] And she did what any, you know, any of us would do really if we were presented with an opportunity to change our lives. [01:43:12] If we were so desperate and down on ourselves to change our lives. And frankly, they were preying on someone very vulnerable. [01:43:21] The nurse, as soon as the doctor told her happy birthday, she started to cry. [01:43:28] And he was like, oh, well, she, you know, she probably got let go because she's too old to be on tv and she's kind of a. Has been at this point. But what if I evaluate her for this and give her this opportunity to have a, you know, a different version of herself? [01:43:51] Obviously she was vulnerable and obviously he preyed upon her. And obviously she took the opportunity. [01:44:01] Going back to the medical tourism thing, the ones that are advertised as vacation packages, be extremely wary of those. What kind of recovery are you actually receiving by going on a safari and surgery trip? [01:44:17] General tourism activities, let alone a safari, are not compatible with recovering from a surgery. People have this misconception that cosmetic or plastic surgery is not actual surgery. And I'm here to tell you that if you go under anesthesia and somebody cuts you open, it's a surgery. It doesn't matter. [01:44:39] Popular surgery destinations include Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, the Dominican, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines, Poland, South Africa, Thailand. Statistics are really not available, honestly, on the number of people that take cosmetic surgery vacations. But we generally know that those that do are not seeking minimally invasive procedures. [01:45:06] Let's talk about a minimally invasive cosmetic procedure. [01:45:11] Botox, right? [01:45:15] That's minimally invasive. It's just a tiny needle. They inject it where you want and you're done. [01:45:21] That's great. That's relatively safe. [01:45:27] The most common procedures that people go on these vacations for are breast augmentation, liposuction, a fucking facelift, tummy tucks, eyelid surgery, rhinoplasty. Some are even offering, quote, unquote, extreme makeovers. [01:45:51] According to the ASPs, 93% of all cosmetic surgery patients are women, with the majority of them being aged 40 to 54 years old. And that patients that opt for cosmetic tourism mirror this same demographic. With this in mind, we can safely assume that people who are desperate to receive a cosmetic procedure are being targeted. [01:46:18] Right? [01:46:22] If I have, let's say I live in New York, so to get my lips done, it's $900 for one syringe of filler. Okay, $900 for a cosmetic procedure. You might be thinking, oh, that's really not so bad. [01:46:40] Then maybe let's talk about a rhinoplasty. I mean, some of them are like $25,000. [01:46:47] But if I could fly to, you know, Poland or South Africa or the Dominican or any of these other places I mentioned and have, you know, a hotel, an all inclusive hotel to stay in where I have, like a potentially qualified medical, you know, staff member present with me at all times to help take care of me during my recovery, and I get all that for a couple weeks, right? Of stay, and let's say that's 5K. Well, now we're a lot closer than the 25K that, you know, you were maybe originally quoted for the rhinoplasty, and in this case for Elizabeth, she Got this for free. [01:47:36] She doesn't have to pay for this at all. She didn't give a credit card number to the guy over the phone. [01:47:45] So then why would someone be dying to have a procedure like this done? [01:47:52] Partially exit medical tourism and enter bdd. [01:47:57] BDD is body dysmorphic disorder and it is seriously impactful here. BDD is estimated to impact 1 in 50 people and constitutes a disabling preoccupation with perceived defects. According to a report from the Priory Group. [01:48:18] They go on to describe that the condition usually appears first in adolescence, which is a time in life that people are hyper focused and sensitive about their appearance as their body changes, making those that suffer from this excessively self conscious. [01:48:35] And I'm not going to say that I know for certain that Elizabeth Sparkle has bdd, but I don't know, just the very definition alone seems to sell it to me. I mean a preoccupation with perceived defects. I mean she it to where it's almost disabling. [01:48:59] I would consider it disabling if you can't leave your house to go on a date with a guy who's literally obsessed with you, who thinks you're the most beautiful person that's ever walked the earth, or you're so preoccupied with it that you want to go out of your way to embark on a risky and unknown black market quote unquote life changing experience like these people are getting preyed upon. [01:49:31] The BDD foundation offers the following information. [01:49:36] Symptoms Avoidance. Due to heightened self consciousness and anxiety about their appearance, individuals with BDD may start avoiding social situations altogether. Elizabeth did that. [01:49:51] And while she's, you know, when they switch back and forth every time it's Elizabeth's turn to be conscious, she fucking sits on the couch all day. She doesn't see anybody. [01:50:02] This avoidance is often driven by the fear of being negatively judged or perceived as flawed by others. It can lead to social isolation, withdrawal and a decline in quality of life. Individuals may also avoid mirrors and anything that could be considered a reflective surface. [01:50:22] Y'all still with me after what I just told you about this film? [01:50:28] Preoccupation Individuals with BDD will have an overwhelming and persistent focus on a perceived flaw or flaws in their physical appearance. These perceived flaws are typically very minor or of normal variation. But they become the central point of attention, causing intrusive thoughts and significant distress. Some might argue so distressing that you take the substance. [01:50:57] Repetitive behaviors. Much like ocd, people with BDD may engage in repetitive behaviors as a way to cope with their distress. [01:51:06] These behaviors become time consuming and interfere with daily functioning. [01:51:13] Reassurance Seeking. [01:51:15] Individuals with BDD often seek reassurance from friends, family, or even strangers to alleviate their anxiety about their appearance. They may repeatedly ask questions about their looks, but no amount of reassurance seems to be enough to dispel their concerns. In fact, evidence shows that providing reassurance about appearance can perpetuate the problem. [01:51:39] Hence, Fred's reassurance to her that he thinks she's the most beautiful girl in the world. And then, you know, she then decides to do her makeup 50,000 times and change her clothes 100 times before attempting to leave the house and ends up not even going because one minor wrinkle on her face has now become the worst thing that's ever happened to her. [01:52:03] And finally, significant distress and functional impairment. The preoccupation with perceived flaws and the associated behaviors can lead to significant emotional distress, anxiety, and impairment in various areas of life, such as work, education, relationships, and daily activities. Hmm. [01:52:26] Elizabeth would literally wait until, like, she would be counting down the minutes, the days, the hours, until it was time to switch back to being sue again. Because that is, you know, what she sees as the perfect version of herself. She sees her current self as ugly or unworthy. [01:52:48] Common worries with BDD the most common worries are usually around facial features, skin, hair, nose, eyes, chin, and teeth. However, any part of the body can become a focus of concern, including your genitals. [01:53:05] Some people with BDD do not worry about specific features, but instead say that they feel generally ugly. [01:53:12] Others say that they do not mind their individual features, but feel that they do not fit together properly or do not look symmetrical. [01:53:22] Well, Elizabeth doesn't really point to any one feature in particular, so maybe that's a common worry for her. [01:53:34] Sometimes young people worry that they look too feminine or too masculine, or that they do not look right compared to their family or others. [01:53:45] Common behaviors. [01:53:47] People with BDD typically carry out a range of repetitive behaviors to try to cope with their appearance. Concerns like trying to camouflage their perceived flaw by covering it with clothing. [01:53:59] Elizabeth did that. She was looking at her chest and decided to put a scarf on. [01:54:06] Excessive amounts of makeup. [01:54:08] Yep. She decided at one point that she wasn't wearing enough makeup on her face and decided to add even more or using other parts of their body. She had no problem showing her legs, but, you know, with the hand situation, she decided that wasn't something she wanted to do. [01:54:31] It is very common for people with BDD to also spend a lot of time carrying out grooming routines, such as applying makeup and cosmetic Products. This is not about vanity. It is about trying to correct their perceived defects in an attempt to look normal. [01:54:49] Yeah, I feel like over half the movie, like I said, is about looking at the fucking mirror and being, like, picking yourself apart. So, yeah, I mean, the most pivotal moment that demonstrates this aspect is whenever she was, you know, doing her makeup a bunch of times or reapplying it or changing it, and it's like, it often times these defects, they're not even there. Like, that's what's so sad. [01:55:24] Lots of people compare their appearance to others. This is often done online. Seeking reassurance is common to. [01:55:31] Elizabeth didn't really seek out reassurance, but the validation of knowing that sue, which would be the younger, better version of Elizabeth, is getting so much attention, so much traction. [01:55:47] And did you notice that it's only when she knows that she is trying to terminate Sue? That is the first and only time that she refers to the two of them as one. [01:56:03] She's like, please wake up. We have to go get ready. [01:56:09] We have to go to the studio and get ready. It's our. It's our big night. [01:56:17] Well, you know, an hour before that, you were dead set on getting rid of her. [01:56:24] So that reassurance of, you know, knowing that people are so infatuated with sue is enough for Elizabeth to be like, okay. [01:56:36] Some people with BDD engage in behaviors that can be harmful when they're trying to improve their appearance, like picking at spots or skin, which actually then causes scars and further anxiety with scarring. [01:56:52] Yeah, I could see that. [01:56:58] Impacts of BDD on mood. [01:57:02] If you have bdd, you'll probably have noticed a number of changes to your mood. This can include lots of negative emotions, including anxiety, sadness or low mood, poor self esteem, like thinking that they are useless or worthless, or feeling disgusted about yourself. It may be hard to enjoy things that they liked doing before, have less energy and have difficulty concentrating or have problems with eating or sleeping, either too much or too little. Hmm, that sounds familiar. [01:57:34] Sue was doing all the things that Elizabeth, you know, had done previously in her earlier years. And now Elizabeth is sad, has low mood, feels generally disgusted. She is, you know, trying to hide these imperfections that she has from sue taking advantage of her spinal fluid. And she is not really appearing to be sleeping that much, but she is absolutely having less energy. She is, like, hanging out with the TV all the time and not doing anything, and she's eating everything. [01:58:13] Right. I don't even know how her body could handle that much food. [01:58:18] And so it sounds like those suffering from BDD are the perfect candidates for these risky medical procedures, right? [01:58:26] Wrong. [01:58:28] It's actually estimated that around 15% of people seeking plastic surgery have BDD, and many that suffer from BDD use plastic surgery in an attempt to alter perceived defects with frequent and repetitive cosmetic surgery. Fewer than 10% of BDD patients will be satisfied with the results of their plastic surgery. And their anxieties typically just switch to a different unmodified body part. [01:58:54] Don't even get me started on what might happen if the individual has BDD and they suffer a botched surgery. I think we probably just saw it on screen when we were watching the substance. [01:59:10] The other reason why it's dangerous for those with BDD to embark on in plastic surgery or in dabble even in it, is that either they'll become satisfied with the modified part of their body and move on to a different part and then want to modify that, too, or they'll continue to fixate on the part that has been modified and try to get revisions. [01:59:39] They constantly will feel like, you know, I know that I've seen other people that get cosmetic procedures and like, they're so happy with their results. Like, they couldn't possibly feel like how I feel, and I want to feel like them. So I am going to just keep getting it. They have repeat surgeries. They can't stop. They're so obsessed with trying to change these things, but even if they change them, it literally, like, it doesn't change anything. Like, you're still going to feel the same way. [02:00:16] So with all that in mind, my take is this. [02:00:21] Elizabeth was really down on her luck, right? She got fired from her job for, you know, her age. [02:00:33] She's unmarried. She doesn't have any children. [02:00:37] She, you know, shows her age. She's almost, like, shocked that people think she's. She's as old as she is. But then she exhibits these behaviors, like reading the newspaper still or drinking Alka Seltzer. [02:00:55] Like, I've not ever done either one of those things. [02:01:04] She also, right, is cognizant and is almost, like, confused in a way that she has become so focused on how she looks and her body and thus is desperate to create a new version of herself that she has been told will be a younger, better, prettier version of who she is right now. But to me, sue, while, yeah, was a character in the film, sue is not actually there. Sue represents the desire that Elizabeth has for how she wants to look and who she wants to be. She wants to go back in time. She wants to look like this. And she wants to have this certain life. [02:01:54] And her desires, you know, embodied by sue, are literally draining her from her life. [02:02:04] Like, I find this whole thing to be a satire and a metaphor. [02:02:09] Every time sue buys another day from Elizabeth's body by using more of her spinal fluid to stabilize, she is introducing the fact that she is taking life from a human, another human, so that she can feel better, so that she can be there longer. [02:02:35] And I feel that that all was on the screen, obviously, but that Elizabeth's obsession with how she looks and her age is literally killing her. And it almost makes you wonder, with that in mind, at the end of the film, whenever, you know, this mass of organ tissue with Elizabeth's original face on it dissolves. [02:03:13] Did that really, you know, she was still saying on stage, like, it's still me, I'm me, I'm still myself. [02:03:24] She has allowed her brain to rob her of all of these things. [02:03:30] She's allowed her brain to rob her of satisfaction with her life, to rob her of feeling like she has the ability to interact with other humans in, you know, a conventional way and a healthy way. [02:03:45] She has basically now only sees herself as this. This mass with a face and nothing else. [02:03:57] And she was so desperate, right, to turn back time and go back to before she ever had any modifications done, before she ever had the substance. She wanted so badly to go back to a time before sue. And what is done is done. This is a great reference for cosmetic and plastic surgery. You can't just, like, go back in time and not ever have had it, like you're gonna have it or like you're not going to have it. But, like, if you do have it, if you have a procedure done, you can't just go back and. And it never have been there. That's not how it works. [02:04:37] So her evolution throughout the film illustrates to me that it's a metaphor for never being satisfied with, like, a cosmetic procedure. Like, you just, you go and you go and you allow and you do and you pay, when in this case, she pays with her time to look this way, and you're still so unhappy that you just keep going and getting, you know, more surgeries and more procedures and more modifications. And when does it ever stop? I mean, for some people, it stops when they die. [02:05:20] They die during surgery. You know, it's like a never ending cycle. [02:05:29] Now for healthy people, you know, the research on what the impacts are of cosmetic procedures on those that are healthy is, is very positive. It's extremely positive. People report feeling very satisfied or even more satisfied than they were previously with how they look. And I think that's important. I have never understood the whole like, well, I think you're beautiful, so you don't need it. [02:05:57] Cool. You don't have to walk around in my body every day. I do. So if I want something, then I'm going to go get it. Right? [02:06:07] I don't really care. I mean, I care to an extent, but like I don't really care what you think about how I look. I wanted to feel like I'm confident in how I look. This is about me. [02:06:22] So in a way it also feels that Elizabeth is doing these things, you know, for other people. [02:06:32] It's like, you know, she gets fired, she. There's men around her all the time. There's men throughout the film that do nothing but make these insane, misogynistic, you know, comments like pretty girls should smile. [02:06:44] And you know, at 50 it stops, whatever that is. And I want young, I want hot. I want her right now. I wish her boobs were in the middle of her face instead of that nose. Like so much, so much stuff, right? [02:07:04] And when you are fed these things, right, all the time, it almost becomes for the characters in this film, a sickness to where it's like you were already really good. Is it really worth it to try to make yourself better? Because you might actually just end up worse. And these feelings of, you know, low self esteem and low self confidence are literally rotting sue and Elizabeth from the inside out until they are unrecognizable anymore. [02:07:44] And that is how I feel. So no, I vehemently disagree with the, with the article from the cut that I previously mentioned that Demi Moore's character doesn't have to be like older or more wrinkly or have more neck skin. That's not, that's not the case. The average person who seeks out these cosmetic procedures or even risky procedures are not ugly. [02:08:14] Like they're not. Like they're literally just people who are already pretty or are just uncomfortable with how they look. And like she's the perfect example to play this character. [02:08:32] She's absolutely perfect. And what I really love too is that the whole film, not all of it, but that's what it feels like takes place in the bathroom. The bathroom is such a pivotal place, especially in the life of a woman. [02:08:50] We do our makeup in the bathroom, we do our hair in the bathroom. We get ready in the bathroom. [02:08:56] We have our periods in the bathroom. [02:08:59] We look in the mirror in the bathroom. We shower in the bathroom. We're exposed to our naked body in the bathroom. [02:09:06] Everything pivotal or even defining about the everyday experience of a woman happens in the bathroom. [02:09:15] That is why this happens in the bathroom. [02:09:20] This film is so much more under the surface than it is, you know, in your face. And I just wish people could see everything the way I see it. [02:09:32] It's really sad, but thank you all for listening. If you stuck around this long, I hope you enjoyed this episode. And before I let you go, I have to remind you that the final girl on 6th Avenue is part of the Incredible Morbidly Beautiful Network. Morbidly Beautiful is your home for horror. If you love horror in any way, shape or form, you are welcome. At Morbidly Beautiful you can find my podcast and many others like it. If you go on over to morbidlybeautiful.com to check it out, you can find this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon Music and Podcast Pocket Casts. If you enjoyed the show, it would mean the world to me if you left me a five star review and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. For any questions, comments, concerns, suggestions or requests, you can email me at finalgirl on6mail.com or send me a message on Instagram at finalgirl on six. [02:10:29] Thank you so much for listening. Please take some time to see this film. If you haven't. It's really pivotal. I do think it's impactful and I think you will enjoy it. [02:10:40] So that is all for today. Thank you for listening. [02:10:45] I can't wait to talk to you soon with another crazy movie. [02:10:49] Never Forget that I'm 6th Avenue's very own final girl, Sa.