Shell Review – The Actress Gets Overshadowed by Her Co-Star in Schlocky Curio
There are moments in the dumped schlock horror Shell that might present it like a giddy tipsy camp classic if described in isolation. Envision the segment where Kate Hudson's seductive beauty mogul compels Elisabeth Moss to operate a enormous device while making her stare into a reflective surface. There's also, a cold open featuring former Showgirl Elizabeth Berkley emotionally removing shells that have grown on her flesh before being murdered by a masked killer. Subsequently, Hudson offers an elegant dinner of her shed epidermis to enthused diners. Plus, Kaia Gerber transforms into a massive sea creature...
If only Shell was as outrageously fun as that all makes it sound, but there's something strangely dull about it, with actor-turned-director Max Minghella having difficulty to bring the over-the-top thrills that something as absurd as this so obviously needs. It's never quite obvious what or why Shell is and the target viewers, a cheaply made lark with very little to offer for those who weren't involved in the filmmaking, appearing more superfluous given its unfortunate resemblance to The Substance. Each center on an LA actor fighting to get the jobs and fame she believes is her due in a ruthless field, unjustly judged for her physical traits who is then tempted by a transformative treatment that offers quick results but has frightening drawbacks.
Although Fargeat's version hadn't premiered last year at Cannes, ahead of Minghella's made its bow at the Toronto film festival, the comparison would still not be kind. While I was not a big enthusiast of The Substance (a flashily produced, excessively lengthy and shallow act of shock value mildly saved by a stellar acting) it had an clear lasting power, readily securing its rightful spot within the culture (expect it to be one of the most parodied films in next year's Scary Movie 6). Shell has about the same degree of insight to its predictable message (beauty standards for women are unreasonably brutal!), but it fails to rival its extreme physical terror, the film in the end recalling the kind of no-budget rip-off that would have trailed The Substance to the video store back in the day (the inferior sequel, the budget version etc).
The film is oddly headlined by Moss, an actress not known for her levity, miscast in a role that demands someone more ready to lean into the silliness of the territory. She teamed up with Minghella on The Handmaid's Tale (one can understand why they both might crave a break from that show's punishing grimness), and he was so desperate for her to star that he decided to adjust for her being clearly six months pregnant, cue the star being distractingly hidden in a lot of big hoodies and coats. As an uncertain star seeking to push her entry into Hollywood with the help of a crustaceous skin routine, she might not really convince, but as the sinister 68-year-old CEO of a dangerous beauty brand, Hudson is in significantly better form.
The actor, who remains a perennially underrated force, is again a joy to watch, mastering a distinctly Hollywood style of faux-earnest fakeness supported by something genuinely sinister and it's in her unfortunately limited scenes that we see what the film had the potential to become. Coupled with a more fitting co-star and a wittier script, the film could have played like a feverishly mean cross between a 50s “woman's picture” and an 1980s monster movie, something Death Becomes Her did so wonderfully well.
But the script, from Jack Stanley, who also wrote the equally weak action thriller Lou, is never as acidic or as smart as it might have been, satire kept to its most obvious (the ending hinging on the use of an NDA is more humorous in concept than delivery). Minghella doesn't seem certain in what he's really trying to create, his film as plainly, lethargically directed as a daytime soap with an just as bad score. If he's trying to do a knowing direct imitation of a bottom shelf VHS horror, then he hasn't pushed hard enough into studied pastiche to make it believable. Shell should take us all the way over the edge, but it's too scared to make the jump.
Shell is up for hire online in the US, in Australia on 30 October and in the UK on 7 November
