Shell Review – Elisabeth Moss Gets Overshadowed by Her Co-Star in Bizarre Horror
There are moments in the unveiled B-movie frightfest Shell that would make it seem like a giddy tipsy camp classic if taken out of context. Envision the scene where Kate Hudson's vampy wellness CEO forces Elisabeth Moss to operate a enormous device while making her stare into a reflective surface. Additionally, a abrupt beginning featuring former Showgirl Elizabeth Berkley tearfully removing growths that have grown on her flesh before being killed by a masked killer. Next, Hudson serves an sophisticated feast of her discarded skin to enthused diners. Furthermore, Kaia Gerber turns into a enormous crustacean...
If only Shell was as hilariously enjoyable as those descriptions suggest, but there's something curiously lifeless about it, with star turned helmer Max Minghella finding it hard to provide the excessive delights that something as silly as this so plainly demands. Audiences may wonder what or why Shell is and who it might be for, a inexpensive endeavor with minimal appeal for those who weren't involved in the project, appearing more superfluous given its unlucky likeness to The Substance. The two highlight an LA actor fighting to get the attention and work she thinks she deserves in a cruel industry, unjustly judged for her physical traits who is then tempted by a transformative treatment that provides instant rewards but has horrifying side effects.
Even if Fargeat's version hadn't debuted last year at Cannes, ahead of Minghella's was unveiled at the Toronto film festival, the contrast would still not be kind. Even though I was not a big enthusiast of The Substance (a gaudily crafted, excessively lengthy and empty act of provocation partially redeemed by a brilliant star turn) it had an undeniable stickiness, easily finding its appropriate niche within the culture (expect it to be one of the most satirized features in next year's Scary Movie 6). Shell has about the same degree of insight to its predictable message (expectations for women's looks are unreasonably brutal!), but it can't match its over-the-top body horror, the film ultimately resembling the kind of low-cost copycat that would have come after The Substance to the rental shop back in the day (the lesser counterpart, the Critters to its Gremlins etc).
The film is oddly headlined by Moss, an performer not known for her levity, poorly suited in a role that requires someone more ready to lean into the silliness of the territory. She teamed up with Minghella on The Handmaid's Tale (one can comprehend why they both might crave a break from that show's punishing grimness), and he was so desperate for her to lead that he decided to accommodate her being noticeably six months pregnant, resulting in the star being awkwardly covered in a lot of bulky jackets and coats. As an insecure actor seeking to push her entry into Hollywood with the help of a crustaceous skin routine, she might not really persuade, but as the slithering 68-year-old CEO of a life-threatening beauty brand, Hudson is in significantly better form.
The performer, who remains a perennially underrated force, is again a pleasure to watch, perfecting a specifically LA brand of faux-earnest fakeness underscored by something authentically dark and it's in her all-too-brief scenes that we see what the film could have been. Matched with a more comfortable sparring partner and a sharper script, the film could have unfolded like a deliriously nasty 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 sharp or as clever as it could be, satire kept to its most transparent (the climax hinging on the use of an NDA is more amusing in concept than realization). Minghella doesn't seem sure in what he's really trying to produce, his film as plainly, lethargically directed as a daytime soap with an similarly poor music. If he's trying to do a winking exact duplicate of a low-rent tape fright, 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 fearful to commit fully.
Shell is up for hire digitally in the US, in Australia on 30 October and in the UK on 7 November
