There are sequences in the unveiled schlock horror Shell that would make it seem like a frivolous inebriated kitschy gem if described in isolation. Imagine the segment where Kate Hudson's glamorous health guru makes Elisabeth Moss to operate a large sex toy while forcing her to look into a looking glass. Moreover, a initial scene starring former Showgirl Elizabeth Berkley emotionally removing crustaceans that have grown on her flesh before being killed by a masked killer. Then, Hudson offers an elegant dinner of her shed epidermis to eager guests. And, Kaia Gerber turns into a enormous crustacean...
If only Shell was as wildly entertaining as the summaries imply, but there's something curiously lifeless about it, with actor-turned-director Max Minghella finding it hard to provide the excessive delights that something as silly as this so clearly requires. The purpose remains unclear what or why Shell is and the target viewers, a low-budget experiment with few attractions for those who didn't participate in the project, feeling even less necessary given its unfortunate resemblance to The Substance. Each focus on an LA actor fighting to get the jobs and fame she feels entitled to in a cruel industry, unfairly critiqued for her looks who is then lured by a game-changing procedure that grants immediate benefits but has frightening drawbacks.
Though Fargeat's version hadn't premiered last year at Cannes, ahead of Minghella's made its bow at the Toronto film festival, the parallel would still not be kind. While I was not a big enthusiast of The Substance (a garishly made, too drawn-out and empty act of deliberate offense mildly saved by a brilliant star turn) it had an undeniable stickiness, readily securing its appropriate niche within the culture (expect it to be one of the most mocked movies in next year's Scary Movie 6). Shell has about the same degree of insight to its and-then-what commentary (expectations for women's looks are extremely harsh!), but it doesn't equal its over-the-top body horror, the film in the end recalling the kind of no-budget rip-off that would have come after The Substance to the rental shop back in the day (the Orca to its Jaws, the Critters to its Gremlins etc).
Surprisingly starring by Moss, an actress not known for her levity, poorly suited in a role that needs someone more eager to dive into the absurdity of the territory. She teamed up with Minghella on The Handmaid's Tale (one can comprehend why they both might desire a break from that show's punishing grimness), and he was so desperate for her to star that he decided to accommodate her being noticeably six months pregnant, leading to the star being distractingly hidden in a lot of big hoodies and jackets. As an insecure actor seeking to fight her path into Hollywood with the help of a exoskeleton-inspired treatment, she might not really persuade, but as the sinister 68-year-old CEO of a hazardous beauty brand, Hudson is in much more command.
The performer, who remains a consistently overlooked talent, is again a joy to watch, mastering a specifically LA brand of faux-earnest fakeness supported by something truly menacing and it's in her all-too-brief scenes that we see what the film might have achieved. Coupled with a more suitable co-star and a sharper script, the film could have come across like a deliriously nasty cross between a 50s “woman's picture” and an 1980s monster movie, something Death Becomes Her did so brilliantly.
But the script, from Jack Stanley, who also wrote the equally weak action thriller Lou, is never as sharp or as intelligent as it should have been, social commentary kept to its most transparent (the finale hinging on the use of an NDA is more amusing in idea than execution). Minghella doesn't seem certain in what he's really trying to make, his film as simply, slowly filmed as a TV drama with an similarly poor music. If he's trying to do a knowing carbon copy of a cheap cassette scare, then he hasn't pushed hard enough into studied pastiche to convince the audience. Shell should take us all the way to the brink, but it's too scared to commit fully.
Shell is available to rent via streaming in the US, in Australia on 30 October and in the UK on 7 November
