Fans of The Substance Should Watch Coralie Fargeat’s 2017 Horror Debut

The 2025 Academy Awards made the psychological body horror film The Substance an Oscar winner when the movie took home the award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling. Written and directed by French filmmaker Coralie Fargeat, The Substance was nominated in four other categories, including Best Picture, Best Actress for Demi Moore, and two nods for Fargeat for Best Original Screenplay and Best Director. The highly acclaimed movie deservedly earned Fargeat her first major nominations, but her feature debut, the action horror-thriller Revenge, is worthy of more recognition. Matilda Lutz establishes herself as a striking, multitalented leading lady in what is arguably one of the best entries in the rape-revenge subgenre.

In Revenge, Jen (Lutz) has accompanied her married, wealthy boyfriend Richard (Kevin Janssens) on a vacation to a remote house in the desert. The couple are surprised when two of Richard’s friends, Stan (Vincent Colombe) and Dimitri (Guillaume Bouchéde), show up early for a hunting trip. The first part of the film follows the male gaze as the men make it obvious how attracted they are to Jen, often staring at her. The audience learns that Jen dreams of going to Los Angeles since “everything is possible there.” She dances and has some flirty fun with the guys as they all drink and chat outside. These men ultimately punish her for it, similar to how Moore’s character in The Substance is punished by men for her age and not meeting their beauty standards.

When Richard is away from the house for a few hours, Stan assaults and rapes Jen. Dimitri is aware of what’s happening and walks away from the violence, deciding to take a dip in the pool instead of helping her. The harrowing scene is shot carefully by Fargeat, who spends more time following Dimitri around the house as he allows the attack to happen instead of focusing on overexposing the audience to Jen’s sexual assault.

In 2018, Fargeat told Financial Times that the film is not about the rape itself and was not “visually important” to the movie. “I wanted to deal with the psychological and verbal violence towards her — the rape is symbolic of the way she’s considered and treated.”

Richard is angry when he finds out what Stan did and acknowledges that his friends messed up — and then he victim-blames Jen by saying that she is beautiful and hard to resist. During their subsequent argument, Richard ends up hitting Jen in a rage. Realizing she is alone with three men who have caused and are willing to cause her harm, Jen makes a run for it. Cornered on the edge of a cliff, Richard pushes her off, and a tree branch impales Jen through her torso. Jen miraculously survives, and Revenge turns into a bloody, violent, and deadly woman vs. man hunting “game” for the remainder of the film as Jen takes out the trio one by one.

[RELATED – The Substance Filmmaker Reveals She Turned Down Black Widow to Finish Her Oscar-Nominated Movie]

During her interview with Financial Times, Fargeat acknowledged that part of the film’s message points out that how someone behaves, including being sensual, flirtatious, or comfortable with one’s body or sexuality, should never result in sexual assault.

“I wanted to embrace the fascinating, polarising image of the Lolita,” Fargeat said. “Jen can be empty and stupid and an object of desire if she wants. It shouldn’t lead to what’s going to happen next.”

Just as Moore’s Elisabeth and Margaret Qualley (who plays Sue) experience significant psychological and physical transformations in The Substance, Jen’s journey of revenge includes her own transformation. MUBI describes it as Fargeat’s heroine going “from Barbie to badass with dangerous, delirious style.” Fargeat has never really been concerned with explanations of the hows or whys, instead telling a story through a character’s experience and allowing the audience to respond accordingly. The use of peyote later on in Revenge and nature’s involvement with our protagonist’s story has implications about her second chance at life as the desert plays an integral part in Jen’s transformation, survival, and path of revenge.

Richard and his vile buddies are disrespectful to both women and nature. When we first meet Stan and Dimitri, they are decked out with guns, ammo, and hunting gear. While the main focus of Revenge is Jen’s transformation into a vengeful killing machine, a secondary layer of man vs. nature is prominent throughout the movie. Jen is the embodiment of neo-feminism and mother nature (and its creatures) seeking revenge towards man through sheer brutality on behalf of herself and the desert environment providing a sense of shelter and paralleling her experience.

The gory destruction of Revenge’s antagonists is thrilling and satisfying. Fargeat previously credited movies like Old Boy, I Saw the Devil, and David Cronenberg‘s body horror projects with her fascination for bloody scenes and her take on the body horror subgenre.

“I’m interested in when blood and flesh create something that becomes baroque and operatic. [Quentin] Tarantino does that in Kill Bill,” the filmmaker told Financial Times. “All these intentions, I wanted to put together and use in a different way, and make a genre film my way.”

Revenge is available to stream on MUBI, Shudder, and AMC+.

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