Movie Critique – Elisabeth Moss Gets Overshadowed by Kate Hudson in Schlocky Curio
There are scenes in the released schlock horror Shell that could paint it as like a wild inebriated cult favorite if taken out of context. Envision the segment where the actress's glamorous health guru forces Elisabeth Moss to masturbate with a enormous device while forcing her to look into a looking glass. Additionally, a cold open starring former dancer Elizabeth Berkley emotionally hacking off shells that have grown on her skin before being murdered by a unknown murderer. Then, Hudson offers an sophisticated feast of her discarded skin to enthused diners. Plus, Kaia Gerber transforms into a giant lobster...
If only Shell was as outrageously fun as those descriptions suggest, but there's something curiously lifeless about it, with performer turned filmmaker Max Minghella finding it hard to bring the excessive delights that something as absurd as this so obviously needs. Audiences may wonder what or why Shell is and the target viewers, a cheaply made lark with very little to offer for those who had no role in the filmmaking, seeming more redundant given its regrettable similarity to The Substance. The two highlight an Los Angeles star 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 lured by a transformative treatment that provides instant rewards but has horrifying side effects.
Though Fargeat's version hadn't launched last year at Cannes, ahead of Minghella's made its bow at the Toronto film festival, the parallel would still not be flattering. While I was not a big enthusiast of The Substance (a gaudily crafted, overlong and shallow act of provocation partially redeemed by a brilliant star turn) it had an unmistakable memorability, swiftly attaining 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 and-then-what commentary (beauty standards for women are unreasonably brutal!), but it fails to rival its exaggerated grotesquery, the film in the end recalling the kind of low-cost copycat that would have trailed 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 performer not known for her lightness, poorly suited in a role that requires someone more eager to lean into the absurdity of the genre. She teamed up with Minghella on The Handmaid's Tale (one can understand why they both might crave a break from that show's unrelenting bleakness), and he was so eager for her to lead that he decided to accommodate her being visibly six months pregnant, cue the star being obviously concealed in a lot of bulky jackets and coats. As an insecure actor seeking to elbow her way 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 life-threatening beauty brand, Hudson is in far greater control.
The actor, who remains a always underestimated star, is again a delight to watch, excelling at a distinctly Hollywood style of pretend sincerity supported by something authentically dark and it's in her all-too-brief scenes that we see what the film had the potential to become. Paired with a more comfortable co-star and a wittier script, the film could have played 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, social commentary kept to its most blatant (the finale hinging on the use of an NDA is funnier in idea than realization). Minghella doesn't seem sure in what he's really trying to make, his film as simply, slowly filmed as a daytime soap with an equally rubbishy score. If he's trying to do a winking exact duplicate of a bottom shelf VHS horror, then he hasn't gone far enough into deliberate homage to convince the audience. Shell should take us all the way into madness, but it's too afraid to make the jump.
Shell is offered for rental digitally in the US, in Australia on 30 October and in the UK on 7 November
