Film Analysis – Elisabeth Moss Gets Substance-d by Kate Hudson in Bizarre Horror
There are sequences in the released low-budget shocker Shell that might present it like a frivolous tipsy cult favorite if viewed separately. Imagine the part where Kate Hudson's seductive wellness CEO compels her co-star to masturbate with a giant vibrator while instructing her to gaze into a reflective surface. There's also, a initial scene featuring former Showgirl Elizabeth Berkley tearfully hacking off shells that have grown on her body before being killed by a hooded assailant. Subsequently, Hudson serves an refined meal of her discarded skin to enthused diners. Furthermore, Kaia Gerber turns into a massive sea creature...
If only Shell was as wildly entertaining as the summaries imply, but there's something strangely dull about it, with star turned helmer Max Minghella having difficulty to deliver the over-the-top thrills that something as absurd as this so clearly requires. The purpose remains unclear what or why Shell is and who it might be for, a low-budget experiment with very little to offer for those who had no role in the production, seeming more redundant given its unlucky likeness to The Substance. Both center on an LA actor struggling to get the jobs and fame she thinks she deserves in a ruthless field, unjustly judged for her looks who is then tempted by a revolutionary process that provides instant rewards but has frightening drawbacks.
Even if Fargeat's version hadn't debuted last year at Cannes, ahead of Minghella's made its bow at the Toronto film festival, the parallel would still not be flattering. Even though I was not a big enthusiast of The Substance (a gaudily crafted, too drawn-out and hollow act of shock value mildly saved by a brilliant star turn) it had an unmistakable memorability, readily securing its deserved place within the pop culture (expect it to be one of the most mocked movies in next year's Scary Movie 6). Shell has about the same amount of substance to its predictable message (female appearance ideals are impossibly punishing!), but it doesn't equal its exaggerated grotesquery, the film in the end recalling the kind of cheap imitation that would have come after The Substance to the video store back in the day (the Orca to its Jaws, the Critters to its Gremlins etc).
It's strangely led by Moss, an actor not known for her levity, wrongly placed in a role that demands someone more ready to lean into the silliness of the territory. She collaborated with Minghella on The Handmaid's Tale (one can understand why they both might long for a break from that show's unrelenting bleakness), and he was so eager for her to star that he decided to work around her being noticeably six months pregnant, cue the star being obviously concealed in a lot of big hoodies and coats. 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 sell the role, but as the sleek 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 joy to watch, mastering a particular West Coast variety of pretend sincerity supported by something authentically dark and it's in her all-too-brief scenes that we see what the film might have achieved. Paired with a more suitable co-star and a sharper script, the film could have unfolded like a deliriously nasty cross between a mid-century women's drama and an decade-old beast flick, something Death Becomes Her did so wonderfully well.
But the script, from Jack Stanley, who also wrote the similarly limp action thriller Lou, is never as biting or as clever as it might have been, mockery kept to its most blatant (the finale centering on the use of an NDA is more humorous in theory than execution). Minghella doesn't seem sure in what he's really trying to make, his film as simply, slowly filmed as a afternoon serial with an similarly poor soundtrack. If he's trying to do a winking carbon copy of a low-rent tape fright, then he hasn't pushed hard enough into deliberate homage to make it believable. Shell should take us all the way into madness, but it's too afraid to commit fully.
Shell is up for hire digitally in the US, in Australia on 30 October and in the UK on 7 November
