Film Analysis – Elisabeth Moss Gets Overshadowed by Kate Hudson in Schlocky Curio
There are scenes in the dumped schlock horror Shell that would make it seem like a wild tipsy camp classic if viewed separately. Picture the part where Kate Hudson's glamorous health guru makes her co-star to use a large sex toy while making her stare into a mirror. Moreover, a initial scene featuring former Showgirl Elizabeth Berkley tearfully cutting away crustaceans that have appeared on her body before being murdered by a hooded assailant. Next, Hudson serves an elegant dinner of her discarded skin to enthused guests. And, Kaia Gerber becomes a giant lobster...
It's a shame Shell was as wildly entertaining as that all makes it sound, but there's something oddly flat about it, with star turned helmer Max Minghella having difficulty to deliver the excessive delights that something as silly as this so obviously needs. Audiences may wonder what or why Shell is and its intended audience, a cheaply made lark with very little to offer for those who didn't participate in the filmmaking, appearing more superfluous given its regrettable similarity to The Substance. The two center on an Los Angeles star striving to get the attention and work she thinks she deserves in a harsh business, unfairly critiqued for her physical traits who is then seduced by a revolutionary process that provides instant rewards but has horrifying side effects.
Although Fargeat's version hadn't launched last year at Cannes, four months before Minghella's was shown at the Toronto film festival, the comparison would still not be flattering. Although I was not a huge admirer of The Substance (a gaudily crafted, too drawn-out and empty act of shock value somewhat rescued by a stellar acting) it had an clear lasting power, readily securing its appropriate niche 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 degree of insight to its and-then-what commentary (beauty standards for women are unreasonably brutal!), but it fails to rival its exaggerated grotesquery, the film in the end recalling the kind of no-budget rip-off that would have come after The Substance to the video store back in the day (the lesser counterpart, the knock-off etc).
It's strangely led by Moss, an actress not known for her humor, miscast in a role that requires someone more eager to lean into the absurdity of the territory. She worked with Minghella on The Handmaid's Tale (one can see why they both might long for a break from that show's unrelenting bleakness), 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 distractingly hidden in a lot of bulky jackets and coats. As an uncertain star seeking to elbow her way 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 significantly better form.
The actress, who remains a consistently overlooked talent, is again a delight to watch, perfecting a specifically LA brand of faux-earnest fakeness underscored by something authentically dark and it's in her regrettably short scenes that we see what the film could have been. Paired with a more fitting sparring partner and a wittier script, the film could have come across like a deliriously nasty cross between a 50s “woman's picture” and an 80s creature feature, something Death Becomes Her did so brilliantly.
But the script, from Jack Stanley, who also wrote the just as flaccid action thriller Lou, is never as sharp or as clever as it should have been, mockery kept to its most obvious (the ending centering on the use of an NDA is funnier in theory than realization). Minghella doesn't seem sure in what he's really trying to produce, his film as simply, slowly filmed as a afternoon serial with an similarly poor score. If he's trying to do a self-aware carbon copy of a low-rent tape fright, then he hasn't gone far enough into conscious mimicry to make it believable. Shell should take us all the way to the brink, but it's too afraid to take the plunge.
Shell is up for hire digitally in the US, in Australia on 30 October and in the UK on 7 November
