‘Substance’, starring Hollywood actress Demi Moore, is overcoming the ‘barrier’ of being a youth-restricted (RG) art film and creating a long-term box office sensation that will remain in the art film box office for a long time.

According to the Integrated Computer Network for Movie Tickets on the 11th, ‘Substance’, released on December 11th of last year, has maintained the number one spot at the independent and art film box office for three whole months. With only 70,000 seats, which is only 4.1% of the total seats (as of the 10th), it is demonstrating its power to be within the top 5 of the overall box office including commercial films, beating out ‘IU Concert: The Winning’, ‘Harbin’.

‘Substance’ has garnered a cumulative audience of 430,000 as of the 10th, becoming the first ‘Paid-rated art film’ to surpass 400,000 viewers in 11 years since ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ in 2014. This is also the highest box office record among the 100 or so films imported by ‘Shanran’, a specialized import and distribution company for diversity and art films, since its establishment in 2010.

This success is thanks to positive word-of-mouth about the film, which clearly deals with feminism with shocking visuals, spreading quickly through social media and other means. ‘Substance’ is about Elizabeth (Demi Moore), a former star who was pushed out of the broadcasting industry because she was old and not as pretty as she used to be, who takes an unknown drug and encounters a ‘new version of herself’, and it strongly deals with themes such as sexual objectification, sexism, and feminism.

It is a work that promotes ‘body horror’, which creates a sense of fear by deforming or damaging the human body, and the shocking reaction of the audience to the bizarre latter half of the film, full of blood, became a hot topic online.

The film is also known to be a work in which actor So Ji-sub participated in the import and distribution investment, drawing even more attention. Since 2014, So Ji-sub has been steadily investing in the import and distribution company Chanran through his agency 51K, introducing several foreign films to Korea.

Recently, works released in Korea in the past year or two, such as ‘Zone of Interest’, ‘Devil‘s Talk Show’, have received endless support from cinephiles and have been successful at the box office, leading to an even greater surge in interest in so-called ‘So Ji-sub pick’ films, including ‘Substance’.

Some film fans are enjoying a new Internet game where they leave comments saying that they enjoyed the film thanks to the music video for So Ji-sub’s song ‘Soganji’, released in 2015. Comments such as “I came to donate Ji-sub-se (aka film development fund)”, “I came to repay a favor by watching a good film” were posted on the video.


Reporter Seungmi Lee smlee@donga.com

This article is automatically translated using Google AI. If you notice any inaccuracies, please let us know at allkstar@donga.com.