Shell Review – The Actress Gets Overshadowed by Kate Hudson in Oddball Film
There are moments in the unveiled B-movie frightfest Shell that would make it seem like a giddy inebriated kitschy gem if described in isolation. Imagine the scene where Kate Hudson's seductive health guru forces Elisabeth Moss to use a giant vibrator while instructing her to gaze into a reflective surface. Additionally, a abrupt beginning starring former performer Elizabeth Berkley emotionally hacking off shells that have appeared on her body before being slaughtered by a masked killer. Next, Hudson offers an elegant dinner of her removed outer layer to enthused attendees. Furthermore, Kaia Gerber turns into a enormous crustacean...
If only Shell was as hilariously enjoyable as the summaries imply, but there's something oddly flat about it, with performer turned filmmaker Max Minghella having difficulty to deliver the over-the-top thrills that something as silly as this so obviously needs. The purpose remains unclear what or why Shell is and who it might be for, a cheaply made lark with very little to offer for those who didn't participate in the project, seeming more redundant given its regrettable similarity to The Substance. The two focus on an Hollywood performer struggling to get the attention and work she believes is her due in a ruthless field, unjustly judged for her looks who is then lured by a revolutionary process that grants immediate benefits but has horrifying side effects.
Even if Fargeat's version hadn't premiered last year at Cannes, preceding Minghella's was shown at the Toronto film festival, the parallel would still not be favorable. Even though I was not a huge admirer of The Substance (a gaudily crafted, overlong and shallow act of shock value partially redeemed by a killer lead performance) it had an undeniable stickiness, easily finding its rightful spot 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 level of depth to its and-then-what commentary (beauty standards for women are impossibly punishing!), but it can't match its exaggerated grotesquery, the film in the end recalling the kind of cheap imitation that would have come after The Substance to the VHS outlet back in the day (the Orca to its Jaws, the budget version etc).
The film is oddly headlined by Moss, an actor not known for her humor, miscast in a role that needs someone more ready to embrace the silliness of the subject matter. She worked with Minghella on The Handmaid's Tale (one can understand why they both might desire a break from that show's relentless darkness), and he was so desperate for her to headline that he decided to accommodate her being visibly six months pregnant, cue the star being distractingly hidden in a lot of oversized sweatshirts and coats. As an uncertain star seeking to push her entry into Hollywood with the help of a shell-based beauty regimen, she might not really convince, but as the slithering 68-year-old CEO of a life-threatening beauty brand, Hudson is in much more command.
The performer, who remains a always underestimated star, is again a pleasure to watch, mastering a specifically LA brand of pretend sincerity supported by something truly menacing and it's in her regrettably short 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 feverishly mean cross between a 1950s female melodrama and an decade-old beast flick, 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 biting or as clever as it should have been, mockery kept to its most blatant (the climax relying on the use of an NDA is funnier in idea than realization). Minghella doesn't seem confident in what he's really trying to produce, his film as plainly, ploddingly shot as a afternoon serial with an equally rubbishy score. If he's trying to do a knowing exact duplicate of a low-rent tape fright, 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 fearful to make the jump.
Shell is available to rent digitally in the US, in Australia on 30 October and in the UK on 7 November
