Style Over Substance: Everybody Shut UP, I’m Watching a Movie!
In the year of our lord 2025, I have hated so many movies. So many movies. Movies other people loved a lot and really connected with. Movies that just made me sigh for the most part. I swear to you that I don’t want to hate these movies. I don’t like leaving a theater and not being buzzy and tingling, blinking into the bright sunlight like a middle-aged and probably more stoned Ponyboy. That’s the experience I want; that’s what I’m paying for. I wanna stay golden, I swear.
I crossed my fingers going into Justin Tipping’s Him (2025), diving in blind and avoiding reviews even from friends, even though the critique of “style over substance” had somehow been whispered into the vacuum I was attempting to create. This prepared me, and, in its way, relieved me in assurance that Him was going to be a movie I enjoyed. Why? I adore style over substance.
All style and no substance? I don’t care. That’s not a criticism for me. If it’s a visual landscape I can scamper into for the (hopefully) 105 minute (max) runtime, I don’t need a story. Style over substance harkens me back to being a child again, when I devoured movies that transported me, like The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland, and did not give a shit about plot. The scaffolding was there; we knew we were on a hero’s journey, so there would be bumps and twists and musical numbers along the way, but we didn’t need an answer for anything that was happening.
That’s not my official review of Him; I just want people to know where I’m coming from.
Him reminded me of another cozy (meant unironically) footnote in my personal film history: the Halloween when Bravo aired their 100 Scariest Movie moments and I was introduced to sixties Italian horror movies. They were The Wizard of Oz in stiletto heels and dark, narrow, distinctly-European alleyways. Alice in Wonderland with slim blades and shattered, stained glass windows. Their power of transportation was on par with a proper Kansas twister. Storylines for most giallo horror and supernatural Italian movies of this ilk are pretty easy to follow – you still got invested in people staying safe, or staying alive, or defeating that coven of German witches (the most organized of all the witches). That’s how I felt the entire time I was watching Him. I quickly settled into its austere visual landscape, manicured and art directed while being harshly beautiful. I was worried and I was tense and I was entertained.
Upon seeing other reviews of Him, I was struck by how many critics made statements about this movie not being the place (or having the capacity) to discuss CTE. I do posit that films can use subject matter without the need to be a deep diving, hard-hitting, world-changing piece of work that “brings awareness” or some such claptrap to an issue. We can have our Oscar-baity Very ‘Important’ Movies about Very 'Important’ Topics, and then we can also just have movies that use said topics as storylines. If people get uppity about this, ask them what their opinion is on sexual violence in movies. Should that only be in Very ‘Important’ Movies making oh-so-deep points or are we ok with it pretty much whenever? Because we all know the answer.
I just want to point out that the whole goat/G.O.A.T. and tying that to the idea of the sacrificial offering is genius. So actually, I do think this is a style-heavy film with unique moments of substance in it.
The Fall (2006) and The Cell (2000) by Tarsam Singh both get whacked with the “style over substance” label, though I think The Fall fares better than The Cell in collective memory. Unfortunately, I think The Cell suffered from comparisons to Silence of the Lambs, and a ‘90s music video sensibility that looked stilted even in the time. But let me tell ya: it freaked the hell out of me. I love both these movies in different ways, and don’t deny that style is the driver in this vehicle. Storylines can be simple enough to prop up a tent of images and not be the main attraction. Personally, I find too many movies lately getting lost in too many tangles of a story anyway, winding up dumb and confusing at the end. Why keep up the pretense?
I’m a visual person, you’re a visual person. You’re reading a movie review right now. You like to look at cool stuff. Give me the skeleton of a story (little girl in a hospital in the twenties meets broken-hearted stunt man addicted to morphine, for instance) and dazzle me with color, monochrome, patterns, chaos, starkness, opulence; whatever you can make beautiful and commit to film. Movies are art, I believe that from the bottom of my soul, but I’m a simple woman and I don’t need my art to say anything. It can if it wants, ya’ know, here and there. But that’s not a requirement; that’s not what I’m here for.
Saltburn (2024) is another movie that I was surprised to encounter the criticisms of “style over substance” and “it didn’t have anything original to say.” For starters, we all knew the former part of that complaint before going in. The trailers oozed “style over substance.” Secondly: ‘say’? It doesn’t have anything original to say? Fuck me, do you? Do I? Are we really out here pretending movies that dismiss style or splash around in social commentary are saying something original? Nobody’s saying anything in movies that isn’t be said anywhere else. Get the fuck out of here with that ‘original’ shit.
As a side-note: I think I enjoy a lot of these “style over substance” movies because they remind me of musicals. They’ll have long montages with amazing soundtracks and then over-the-top character scenes, then back to the trippy, musical segments!
I won’t even say Him is totally style over substance. It leans that way, but it had enough storyline and allusions and grotesquerie (I guess that’s still part of style… whatever, I’m leaving it) to argue it was saying something. And enough of it all to leave me blinking in the sunlight on my way out, tingling and golden.
