Rating: 4/5
Oh My Horror 2025 | 29/52 | Japanese Horror
The Substance, but with substance
A word at the start: laughing sounds a lot like screaming.
A melodramatic score introduces us to Lilico, wrapped head-to-toe in bandages after receiving full-body plastic surgery. Posters and magazine covers everywhere feature her body. But time passes, and what passes for beautiful fades over the years. To the public, she’s the ideal of grace and natural beauty. Behind the scenes, she’s quite the diva. She cheats on her boyfriend, primarily for career opportunities. It doesn’t help that her mother pushes her in all these realms.
One night, while surveying her body in the mirror, she discovers a bruise forming on her forehead, sending her back to the Platina Clinic for an operation. Soon, she’ll be starring in her first significant film role, so she can’t be out of work for another surgery. So, her mother asks for something quicker.
Little does she know, the clinic where she received her treatment is in trouble for tax evasion, bribing politicians, and drug and baby-part trafficking. The clinic’s processes intentionally degrade, requiring the clients to return for consistent touchups. If they run out of money, the clinic leaves them with severe side effects.
What will Lilico lose first — her looks or her mind?
We'll be forgotten. We're machines for the processing of desires.
Director Mika Ninagawa is also a photographer, known for her brightly colored photographs. The film translates that perspective into film, heightening every moment with rich aesthetics that engage with and subvert the beauty industry’s idealism. It’s a style that works perfectly for the genre-blurring this movie does. Films like Too Beautiful to Die and Nothing Underneath work on a similar wavelength, but not to this extent.
Lilico’s behavior is challenging to tolerate — she’s pretty cruel, even when she means to be kind. When her less attractive sister enters the picture, Lilico pressures her to get work done. The way she toys with her assistant, Hada, is heartbreaking.
Sex becomes the only way she knows how to keep people around, even when they don’t want it. The film contrasts this with Hada’s sex with her boyfriend, which is slow, joyful, and attentive — the type of sex that only comes from years of intimacy and care. Lilico can’t force someone to love her.
Of course, the abuse doesn’t begin with Lilico, nor her manager, who has crafted Lilico into her image. Bejewelled nails, fake eyelashes, makeup brands marketed to pre-teen girls; magazine covers airbrushed to perfection—all of it sends a simple but pervasive message: how a woman looks is what matters. In the decade or more since this came out, this trend has extended into complex skincare routines and getting Botox before you can legally drink.
I compared this to The Substance because both deal with fighting time to maintain an unrealistic beauty standard. I like The Substance, but it lacks the complex character at the center that this film has.
** Stray Thoughts **
- The score is whimsical, at times reminiscent of Danny Elfman’s oom-pah style, with several nods to classical music and a bombastic use of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.
- The film also explores that queer ambiguity — do I want you or do I want to be you?
- I’m not gonna lie — I love her apartment.
- The special effects are excellent, making me squirm in several places.
- The police subplot is a little annoying and obvious — the poetic cop isn’t THAT poetic, stating the themes as bluntly and repeatedly as possible. Cutting it entirely would significantly sharpen this movie.