Movie Critique – Elisabeth Moss Gets Outshone by Kate Hudson in Schlocky Curio
There are sequences in the dumped schlock horror Shell that would make it seem like a frivolous inebriated cult favorite if taken out of context. Imagine the scene where the actress's seductive beauty mogul forces her co-star to use a enormous device while making her stare into a mirror. Additionally, a initial scene featuring former dancer Elizabeth Berkley tearfully removing crustaceans that have appeared on her skin before being murdered by a hooded assailant. Next, Hudson presents an sophisticated feast of her discarded skin to eager guests. Plus, Kaia Gerber transforms into a enormous crustacean...
I wish Shell was as wildly entertaining as that all makes it sound, but there's something curiously lifeless about it, with star turned helmer Max Minghella finding it hard to bring the over-the-top thrills that something as absurd as this so clearly requires. Audiences may wonder what or why Shell is and who it might be for, a low-budget experiment with very little to offer for those who weren't involved in the project, seeming more redundant given its unfortunate resemblance to The Substance. The two focus on an Los Angeles star fighting to get the attention and work she believes is her due in a ruthless field, unjustly judged for her appearance who is then tempted by a game-changing procedure that provides instant rewards but has horrifying side effects.
Even if Fargeat's version hadn't debuted last year at Cannes, preceding Minghella's was unveiled at the Toronto film festival, the parallel would still not be flattering. Even though I was not a particular fan of The Substance (a garishly made, too drawn-out and empty act of shock value somewhat rescued by a stellar acting) it had an unmistakable memorability, readily securing its deserved place within the entertainment world (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 (beauty standards for women are impossibly punishing!), but it doesn't equal its extreme physical terror, the film in the end recalling the kind of cheap imitation that would have followed The Substance to the video store back in the day (the lesser counterpart, the Critters to its Gremlins etc).
The film is oddly headlined by Moss, an actress not known for her humor, poorly suited in a role that needs someone more ready to dive into the silliness of the territory. She teamed up with Minghella on The Handmaid's Tale (one can comprehend why they both might long for a break from that show's punishing grimness), and he was so eager for her to lead that he decided to work around her being noticeably six months pregnant, resulting in the star being obviously concealed in a lot of oversized sweatshirts and outerwear. As an self-doubting performer seeking to push her entry into Hollywood with the help of a shell-based beauty regimen, she might not really convince, but as the sinister 68-year-old CEO of a dangerous beauty brand, Hudson is in far greater control.
The actress, who remains a perennially underrated force, is again a delight to watch, mastering a specifically LA brand of pretend sincerity backed up by something genuinely sinister and it's in her all-too-brief scenes that we see what the film had the potential to become. Coupled with a more suitable co-star and a wittier script, the film could have come across like a deliriously nasty cross between a mid-century women's drama and an 1980s monster movie, something Death Becomes Her did so brilliantly.
But the script, from Jack Stanley, who also wrote the similarly limp action thriller Lou, is never as biting or as intelligent as it should have been, mockery kept to its most blatant (the ending relying on the use of an NDA is more amusing in idea than execution). Minghella doesn't seem sure in what he's really trying to make, his film as plainly, lethargically directed as a afternoon serial with an similarly poor soundtrack. If he's trying to do a self-aware carbon copy of a bottom shelf VHS horror, then he hasn't taken it sufficiently into conscious mimicry to sell it as such. Shell should take us all the way over the edge, but it's too scared to commit fully.
Shell is available to rent digitally in the US, in Australia on 30 October and in the UK on 7 November
