Shell Review – The Actress Gets Substance-d by Her Co-Star in Oddball Film
There are moments in the dumped low-budget shocker Shell that might present it like a wild five-wines-in kitschy gem if taken out of context. Imagine the scene where the actress's glamorous wellness CEO forces Elisabeth Moss to masturbate with a large sex toy while instructing her to gaze into a looking glass. Additionally, a initial scene starring former performer Elizabeth Berkley sadly cutting away growths that have grown on her skin before being killed by a unknown murderer. Subsequently, Hudson serves an refined meal of her shed epidermis to eager guests. And, 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 star turned helmer Max Minghella struggling to bring the luridly indulgent pleasures that something as silly as this so obviously needs. The purpose remains unclear what or why Shell is and the target viewers, a low-budget experiment with minimal appeal for those who had no role in the project, seeming more redundant given its unfortunate resemblance to The Substance. Each center on an Hollywood performer striving to get the attention and work she thinks she deserves in a harsh business, unfairly critiqued for her physical traits who is then tempted by a revolutionary process that offers quick results but has frightening drawbacks.
Though Fargeat's version hadn't launched last year at Cannes, four months before Minghella's made its bow at the Toronto film festival, the contrast would still not be kind. Even though I was not a particular fan of The Substance (a flashily produced, too drawn-out and shallow act of provocation somewhat rescued by a killer lead performance) it had an undeniable stickiness, easily finding 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 amount of substance to its and-then-what commentary (expectations for women's looks are impossibly punishing!), but it fails to rival its exaggerated grotesquery, the film in the end recalling the kind of no-budget rip-off that would have trailed The Substance to the rental shop back in the day (the Orca to its Jaws, the budget version etc).
It's strangely led by Moss, an actress not known for her humor, wrongly placed in a role that needs someone more willing to dive into the silliness of the territory. She collaborated with Minghella on The Handmaid's Tale (one can comprehend 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 adjust for her being noticeably six months pregnant, cue the star being obviously concealed in a lot of oversized sweatshirts and jackets. As an insecure actor seeking to fight her path into Hollywood with the help of a crustaceous skin routine, she might not really persuade, but as the sleek 68-year-old CEO of a hazardous beauty brand, Hudson is in far greater control.
The actress, who remains a always underestimated star, is again a pleasure to watch, perfecting a particular West Coast variety of insincere authenticity underscored by something truly menacing and it's in her regrettably short scenes that we see what the film might have achieved. Paired 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 80s creature feature, 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 acidic or as smart as it should have been, satire kept to its most transparent (the climax relying on the use of an NDA is more amusing in concept than delivery). Minghella doesn't seem sure in what he's really trying to make, his film as simply, slowly filmed as a TV drama with an similarly poor score. If he's trying to do a self-aware direct imitation of a cheap cassette scare, then he hasn't taken it sufficiently into conscious mimicry to sell it as such. Shell should take us all the way into madness, but it's too afraid to commit fully.
Shell is offered for rental via streaming in the US, in Australia on 30 October and in the UK on 7 November
