Film Analysis – Elisabeth Moss Gets Overshadowed by Kate Hudson in Bizarre Horror
There are sequences in the unveiled low-budget shocker Shell that would make it seem like a wild inebriated cult favorite if viewed separately. Envision the segment where Kate Hudson's seductive beauty mogul compels Elisabeth Moss to use a giant vibrator while instructing her to gaze into a looking glass. There's also, a abrupt beginning highlighting former Showgirl Elizabeth Berkley sadly removing shells that have grown on her skin before being slaughtered by a hooded assailant. Next, Hudson offers an refined meal of her shed epidermis to eager diners. And, Kaia Gerber transforms into a giant lobster...
It's a shame 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 over-the-top thrills that something as silly as this so clearly requires. Audiences may wonder what or why Shell is and the target viewers, a inexpensive endeavor with minimal appeal for those who had no role in the project, feeling even less necessary given its unlucky likeness to The Substance. Both highlight an Hollywood performer striving to get the attention and work she believes is her due in a ruthless field, unfairly critiqued for her physical traits who is then tempted by a transformative treatment that provides instant rewards but has frightening drawbacks.
Even if Fargeat's version hadn't premiered last year at Cannes, ahead of Minghella's was shown at the Toronto film festival, the parallel would still not be favorable. Although I was not a huge admirer of The Substance (a flashily produced, too drawn-out and empty act of provocation somewhat rescued 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 mocked movies 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 extremely harsh!), but it can't match its over-the-top body horror, the film finally evoking the kind of low-cost copycat that would have followed The Substance to the video store back in the day (the lesser counterpart, the knock-off etc).
The film is oddly headlined by Moss, an actress not known for her humor, poorly suited in a role that needs someone more ready to embrace the absurdity of the genre. She worked with Minghella on The Handmaid's Tale (one can understand why they both might crave a break from that show's punishing grimness), and he was so desperate for her to headline that he decided to accommodate her being noticeably six months pregnant, resulting in the star being obviously concealed in a lot of oversized sweatshirts and outerwear. As an self-doubting performer seeking to push her entry into Hollywood with the help of a exoskeleton-inspired treatment, she might not really sell the role, but as the slithering 68-year-old CEO of a dangerous beauty brand, Hudson is in much more command.
The performer, who remains a perennially underrated force, is again a delight to watch, mastering a particular West Coast variety of faux-earnest fakeness backed up by something truly menacing and it's in her all-too-brief scenes that we see what the film could have been. Coupled with a more comfortable sparring partner and a more incisive script, the film could have played like a deliriously nasty cross between a 50s “woman's picture” and an decade-old beast flick, something Death Becomes Her did so exceptionally.
But the script, from Jack Stanley, who also wrote the just as flaccid action thriller Lou, is never as sharp or as smart as it should have been, satire kept to its most transparent (the ending hinging on the use of an NDA is more humorous in idea than realization). Minghella doesn't seem confident in what he's really trying to produce, his film as bluntly, ploddingly shot as a TV drama with an similarly poor score. If he's trying to do a self-aware carbon copy of a bottom shelf VHS horror, then he hasn't taken it sufficiently into deliberate homage to convince the audience. Shell should take us all the way to the brink, but it's too fearful to take the plunge.
Shell is available to rent online in the US, in Australia on 30 October and in the UK on 7 November
