Movie Critique – The Actress Gets Outshone by Her Co-Star in Schlocky Curio
There are moments in the dumped low-budget shocker Shell that might present it like a frivolous inebriated cult favorite if viewed separately. Imagine the part where Kate Hudson's seductive wellness CEO makes her co-star to use a large sex toy while forcing her to look into a reflective surface. There's also, a cold open starring former performer Elizabeth Berkley emotionally hacking off growths that have grown on her flesh before being slaughtered by a hooded assailant. Next, Hudson serves an sophisticated feast of her discarded skin to enthused guests. Plus, Kaia Gerber becomes a massive sea creature...
It's a shame Shell was as hilariously enjoyable as the summaries imply, but there's something curiously lifeless about it, with performer turned filmmaker Max Minghella finding it hard to deliver the excessive delights that something as absurd as this so obviously needs. Audiences may wonder what or why Shell is and who it might be for, a inexpensive endeavor with few attractions for those who had no role in the filmmaking, seeming more redundant given its unfortunate resemblance to The Substance. Each focus on an Los Angeles star fighting to get the jobs and fame she believes is her due in a ruthless field, wrongly evaluated for her appearance who is then lured by a game-changing procedure that grants immediate benefits but has frightening drawbacks.
Even if Fargeat's version hadn't debuted last year at Cannes, four months before Minghella's made its bow at the Toronto film festival, the parallel would still not be favorable. While I was not a particular fan of The Substance (a flashily produced, overlong and empty act of provocation somewhat rescued by a stellar acting) it had an undeniable stickiness, easily finding its deserved place within the pop 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 fails to rival its exaggerated grotesquery, the film in the end recalling the kind of cheap imitation that would have trailed The Substance to the video store back in the day (the inferior sequel, the Critters to its Gremlins etc).
It's strangely led by Moss, an performer not known for her lightness, miscast in a role that requires someone more eager to lean into the silliness of the genre. She teamed up with Minghella on The Handmaid's Tale (one can understand why they both might long for a break from that show's punishing grimness), and he was so determined 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 oversized sweatshirts and outerwear. As an self-doubting performer seeking to fight her path into Hollywood with the help of a exoskeleton-inspired treatment, she might not really convince, but as the sleek 68-year-old CEO of a life-threatening beauty brand, Hudson is in significantly better form.
The performer, who remains a consistently overlooked talent, is again a pleasure to watch, mastering a distinctly Hollywood style of faux-earnest fakeness supported by something genuinely sinister and it's in her regrettably short scenes that we see what the film could have been. Coupled with a more suitable sparring partner and a wittier script, the film could have come across like a wildly vicious cross between a 50s “woman's picture” and an decade-old beast flick, something Death Becomes Her did so brilliantly.
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, mockery kept to its most obvious (the finale centering on the use of an NDA is more amusing in theory than delivery). Minghella doesn't seem confident in what he's really trying to make, his film as simply, ploddingly shot as a daytime soap with an similarly poor music. If he's trying to do a winking exact duplicate of a cheap cassette scare, then he hasn't gone far enough into deliberate homage to convince the audience. Shell should take us all the way to the brink, but it's too afraid to make the jump.
Shell is up for hire via streaming in the US, in Australia on 30 October and in the UK on 7 November
