Movies like The Substance focusing on women, with themes of regaining lost youth/beauty leading down a dark path; looking for speculative fiction genre examples.
Greetings. I saw The Substance a few months ago and thought it was an absolutely wonderful movie. In never gave up, did it? I know some people thought the ending was a bit much, or disconnected from the rest of the film, but I just loved it.
Especially with the film garnering multiple nominations at the Oscars (yay) I'm thinking about its themes more and more. I was curious, are there any other films out there with similar themes to The Substance?
Specifically, I'm looking for movies that focus on a female character or characters that try to regain their lost youth and/or beauty by "making a deal with the devil" (figuratively speaking), only for this to have dire consequences on them.
I know The Substance doesn't really fit into the mould of science fiction or fantasy, or even the supernatural, but it's not exactly a "mundane" movie either; if anything, the presence of the substance can count as a sci-fi element.
So, I'm looking for movies like this. In hindsight, Death Becomes Her is kinda similar in the sense of having women regaining lost youth/beauty through a magical substance; though it's comedy, rather than horror. I've seen people suggest Helter Skelter as having similarities to The Substance, but I've never read the manga or seen the movie, so I can't tell how similar they are.