The Substance (2024)
Horror, Science Fiction, Drama, Comedy • 2h 21m
Director: Coralie Fargeat
Cast: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Edward Hamilton-Clark, Gore Abrams, Oscar Lesage, Christian Erickson, Robin Greer, Tom Morton, Hugo Diego Garcia, Daniel Knight, Jonathon Carley, Jiselle Henderkott, Akil Wingate, Vincent Colombe, Billy Bentley, Lennard Ridsdale, Jordan Ford Silver, Oscar Salem, Viviane Bossina, Matthew Luret, Jana Bittnerová, Olivier Raynal, Tiffany Hofstetter, Nicolas Royer, Nathan Rippy, Manon Arizmendi, Virginie Kotlinski, Brett Gillen, Charlotte Marquardt, Léa Hengl, Gaëlle Raymond, Claire Lemaire, Lila Boughoufala, Aurélien Lorgnier, Ivan Sellier, Philip Schurer, Christian Bourmier, Martin Graham, Christian Bordeleau, Patrick Hamel, Didier Dhondt, Jacques-Yves Dorges, Jean-Claude Matthey, Olivier Jarcin, Jean-Luc Magneron, Charlotte Murray, Aaron Kahn, Gabriela Arnon, Nancy Josephson Lahoussine, Andrew Eldridge, Denise Powers, Bryan Jones, Adam Carage, Maria McClurg, Andrew Desmond, Rebecca Lafont, Laura Puech, Ryan Chidester, Cécile Vogt, Yannick Guérin, Jean Miel, Paul Descoings, Benoit Lévêque, Arthur Molinet, Manon Sachot, Bastien Jorelle, Kelly Hoarau, Michel Juskiewicz, Louise Greggory, Christophe Sartirano, Florent Torres, Romain Caldeira, Barthelemy Thomas, Axel Baille, Ashley Lambert, Ranjani Brow, Chase Fein, Shane Sweet, William Calvert, Michael Corbett, Stephen Apostolina, Yann Bean, Audjyan Alcide, Jonathan Jenvrin, Mimi Maury, Amelye Solange, Kévin Table, Laura Boera, Cissy Duc, Sophie Mercier, Marie Valton, Katrina Budzynski, Alicia Maury, Megane Adamik, Annalisa Pagnotta, Maelle Dantigny, Aleksandra Kedzierska Fontaine, Pauline Sagetat, Agustina Fitzsimons, Elena Shcheglova, Eve Marchant, Lola Donati, Kate Matthews, Ophélie Jonard, Pauline Richard, Laureen Cappelliez, Daria Panchenko, Delphine Beaulieu, Victoria Brun, Cara Chapman, Katharine Matthews, Alexandra Faget, Clémence Juville, Margot L'Entete, Hillary Sukhonos, Matthew Géczy, Namory Bakayoko, Gregory Defleur, Coralie Fargeat
Best English-friendly & video release · updated 11 months ago
UHD tiers
Overview
A fading celebrity decides to use a black market drug, a cell-replicating substance that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself.
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
251 min cut (Extended): Fox Blu-ray. Eagle Pictures has forced Italian subs in some parts
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab) · Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray, caps
The 4K includes both theatrical and extended cuts. It's overall a solid upgrade over previous discs, but some will strongly dislike the color grading.
There are some issues with encoding and grain management.
Nic's review:
Some definitely messed with it as there’s grain management going on that resulted in magnetic, squishy grain movement. Both cuts (4K discs) are affected and it doesn’t look like an encoding issue to me as the bitrates don’t drop down to single digits á la Paramount or StudioCanal. During opticals, the lowest I’ve noted on the Extended 4K was around 30 MB/s vs. ~5 MB/s more for the theatrical cut.
Darker scenes are mostly (but not always) better but when it gets brighter, particularly in exteriors or scenes like the Jennifer Connelly dance scene at minute 38, I can’t unsee the digital tinkering as it does some damage texturally.
I compared it with the Eagle Pictures and Warner Bros Fox Blu-ray of the extended cut and they all look fine without grain management like that. Eagle Pictures’s Blu-ray is an older one if anyone’s curious and credited to another authoring house than 64Biz, which did the 4K.
Other than that, except for some encoding-related chroma noise that peeks through in the DV layer, Eagle Pictures did everything right. They corrected the framing to 1.85, kept the original English titles, the English restoration note, subtitles, HDR/DV is gentle and respectful of the source black levels are better than on the Warner Bros/Fox Blu-ray. Without that grain management, this would’ve been the all-timer release we all longed for.
251 min cut: Fox Blu-ray (24-bit, Eagle Pictures is 16-bit, not audible)
229 min cut: Warner Bros LaserDisc (missing 2 minutes, but original mono mix was never released on DVD/Blu-ray)
Extended edition adds scenes cut from the theatrical, but from a much lower quality source. It's intended to approximate the original cut, but to what extent that is true is debatable.
US theatrical cut is infamously bad, was panned at release and never re-released on home video.
Director: Renny Harlin
Sources: caps-a-holic (opens in a new tab)
Italy Eagle Pictures 4K Blu-ray has better compression than StudioCanal 4K Blu-ray, green-ish SC master that restores some blown-out highlights compared to the Sony master, but bad HDR10 compression (details). The 2023 Sony 4K Blu-ray steelbook has different grading and Dolby Vision that some may prefer, good encoding, but heavy DNR for about 15% of the runtime.
Pick your poison between Eagle Pictures or Sony.
Director: Akira Kurosawa
>StudioCanal UK (slightly better encoding on Eagle?)
The US Criterion DVD has some unique supplements with 2.0 surround audio - this release contains Japan end titles.
The Japan 4K Restoration Blu-ray has some exclusive features with 4.0 audio (though the release is not English-friendly)- this release contains Japan end titles.
The StudioCanal releases contain France end titles - while their 4K Blu-ray releases contain identical features.
Director: Peter MacDonald
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
A new Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray with DV upcoming including with the rest of the films.
> StudioCanal UK, better compression than StudioCanal but no forced subs on non-English dialogue
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
A new Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray with DV upcoming including with the rest of the films.
> StudioCanal UK, better compression than StudioCanal
Director: Damien Chazelle
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
Italy Eagle Pictures has DV, better encode, and no brightness shifts compared to Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray
Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray for the original Dolby Atmos mix
Hong Kong Panorama 4K Blu-ray has two interviews available in HD that are SD everywhere else
Video format: 4K Streaming
France/Germany StudioCanal Blu-ray has more extras
More Horror on Blu-ray
Director: David Lynch
Sources: Reddit (opens in a new tab) · dvdexotica.com (opens in a new tab)
Criterion 4k resto, but it was AI upscaled although supervised and approved by Lynch https://www.reddit.com/r/davidlynch/comments/12klbw9/inland_empire_and_ai_upscaling/
See another detailed review: https://www.dvdexotica.com/2015/05/lets-get-serious-about-inland-empire.html
Director: John Carpenter
Sources: blog.sporv.com (opens in a new tab)
1997? Signature Collection LD
Good: 2017 Arrow and 2016 Shout! Factory Blu-ray have the original audio options.
the only track on Universal 4K, which is in DTS:X, has a mixing error of around 6dB too low on side channels, otherwise very similar to other 5.1 mixes.
Director: Frank Oz
Theatrical Cut: Warner Bros 4K Blu-ray
Director's Cut: Warner Bros Blu-ray
The 4K Blu-ray has both a poor Dolby Atmos remix and the original theatrical Dolby Stereo mix in its best fidelity but only for the Theatrical Cut.
The Blu-ray has a 5.1 remix for the Director's Cut that, while inferior to the original theatrical Dolby Stereo mix, is still far superior to the Dolby Atmos remix on the 4K Blu-ray, and is the best option for the Director's Cut.
Only the DVD has the isolated score.
Director: Julia Ducournau
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
Curzon 4K
HDR helps considerably with the deliberately murky aesthetic. VDMS encode is overall very good despite chroma noise in flashback sequences.
Director: Brian De Palma
Arrow 4K Blu-ray has a better encode than the Kino Lorber and Capelight 4K Blu-rays. Capelight 4K Blu-ray looks low-passed in comparison to the Arrow but is slightly closer to the Arrow in PQ than the Kino Lorber.
Director: Bob Clark
Scream Factory 4K Blu-ray
UK Arrow 4K Blu-ray in December
Directors: Banjong Pisanthanakun & Parkpoom Wongpoom
Australia Umbrella 4K Blu-ray encoded by FiM
Both the US Arrow 4K Blu-ray and UK Shameless 4K Blu-ray are better than the horrible grade of the France Le Chat Qui Fume which has blacks looking greenish and milky with some yellow push. However, comparing these two, there's significant tradeoffs; Arrow has less black crush and some shots seems to be better graded but it's worse in some shots with a slight magenta grade; the UK Shameless 4K Blu-ray has a better color grading.
UK Shameless 4K Blu-ray and US Arrow 4K Blu-ray have exclusive extras
Director: Ridley Scott
Theatrical Cut: Fox 4K Blu-ray
2003 Directors Cut: Fox 4K Blu-ray
(additional scenes appear to be upscaled)
Original Theatrical 70mm 6-Track Stereo: Fox 4K Blu-ray (DTS-HD MA 4.1)
Original Theatrical 35mm Matrixed Dolby Stereo: 1999 DVD? (2.0 mix on the UHD is a downmix)
2003 Directors Cut: Fox 4K Blu-ray, Fox Blu-ray (DTS-HD MA 5.1)
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab) · YouTube (opens in a new tab)
WB 4K Blu-ray see caps and comparison video
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