The Substance Is Now The No. 1 Movie On HBO Max’s Streaming Chart

The Substance is surging on streaming a year after its original release. The Coralie Fargeat body horror movie starred Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley as a fading star who takes a drug that allows her to become a younger version of herself. Moore was nominated for Best Actress at the 2025 Oscars, though she lost to Mikey Madison for Anora.

HBO Max has now updated their daily Top 10 chart of the streaming platform’s most-watched movies. The Substance is No. 1 on the chart, usurping 2025’s Superman from the top spot. The movie, which did win the Oscar for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, had joined the streaming platform just one day before, on October 10.

Previously, The Substance had been streaming on Mubi, which is the same company that distributed it in theaters in 2024. While movies that are newly added to any streaming platform frequently debut in the Top 10, there is likely more behind The Substance immediately taking the No. 1 position than that.

The Demi Moore movie has arrived on HBO Max at the perfect time. It debuted just three weeks before Halloween, during a peak period for horror movie viewing, both in theaters and at home. However, not every horror movie surges during the Halloween season.

Typically, the movies that trend on streaming and VOD during October are titles that are iconic enough to earn yearly rewatches. Usually those titles are either installments in major horror franchises, horror classics that are deemed to be among the scariest movies of all time, or classic children’s horror titles that can be watched by the whole family.

This is borne out by the fact that the majority of the other titles on the HBO Max chart are either franchise installments such as Freddy vs. Jason (No. 5), 2009’s Friday the 13th (No. 9), and 2017’s The Mummy (No. 10), or more family-oriented family horror movies, including Corpse Bride (No. 6), 2002’s Scooby-Doo (No. 7), and Beetlejuice (No. 8),

The fact that 2024’s The Substance has surged all the way to No. 1 among those other Halloween titles could mean that it is on its way toward being minted as a modern classic of the genre. While it remains to be seen how it performs in subsequent years, the fact that it is continuing to capture audiences is a very good sign.