Film Analysis – Elisabeth Moss Gets Overshadowed by Her Co-Star in Oddball Film
There are scenes in the released low-budget shocker Shell that might present it like a wild five-wines-in camp classic if taken out of context. Picture the segment where Kate Hudson's seductive wellness CEO forces Elisabeth Moss to operate a large sex toy while making her stare into a mirror. Additionally, a initial scene featuring former Showgirl Elizabeth Berkley sadly removing growths that have developed on her body before being murdered by a unknown murderer. Next, Hudson serves an elegant dinner of her shed epidermis to eager attendees. Furthermore, Kaia Gerber turns into a giant lobster...
If only Shell was as wildly entertaining as those descriptions suggest, but there's something strangely dull about it, with star turned helmer Max Minghella struggling to bring the over-the-top thrills that something as silly as this so clearly requires. It's never quite obvious what or why Shell is and who it might be for, a inexpensive endeavor with very little to offer for those who weren't involved in the project, seeming more redundant given its unfortunate resemblance to The Substance. Each highlight an Los Angeles star striving to get the jobs and fame she thinks she deserves in a cruel industry, unjustly judged for her appearance who is then tempted by a revolutionary process that offers quick results but has terrifying consequences.
Though Fargeat's version hadn't premiered last year at Cannes, ahead of Minghella's made its bow at the Toronto film festival, the contrast would still not be favorable. While I was not a huge admirer of The Substance (a garishly made, too drawn-out and shallow act of shock value somewhat rescued by a killer lead performance) it had an undeniable stickiness, swiftly attaining its rightful spot 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 obvious social critique (beauty standards for women are impossibly punishing!), but it doesn't equal its over-the-top body horror, the film in the end recalling the kind of no-budget rip-off that would have followed The Substance to the rental shop back in the day (the lesser counterpart, the budget version etc).
The film is oddly headlined by Moss, an actor not known for her lightness, wrongly placed in a role that requires someone more eager to dive into the absurdity of the territory. 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 relentless darkness), and he was so eager for her to star that he decided to work around her being noticeably six months pregnant, resulting in the star being distractingly hidden in a lot of big hoodies and coats. As an uncertain star seeking to elbow her way into Hollywood with the help of a shell-based beauty regimen, she might not really convince, but as the sinister 68-year-old CEO of a dangerous beauty brand, Hudson is in far greater control.
The performer, who remains a perennially underrated force, is again a delight to watch, perfecting a particular West Coast variety of faux-earnest fakeness backed up by something authentically dark and it's in her regrettably short scenes that we see what the film might have achieved. Matched with a more fitting sparring partner and a more incisive script, the film could have come across like a feverishly mean cross between a 50s “woman's picture” and an 80s creature feature, something Death Becomes Her did so wonderfully well.
But the script, from Jack Stanley, who also wrote the equally weak action thriller Lou, is never as sharp or as clever as it should have been, social commentary kept to its most transparent (the ending relying on the use of an NDA is more humorous in concept than delivery). Minghella doesn't seem certain in what he's really trying to produce, his film as plainly, slowly filmed as a daytime soap with an equally rubbishy music. If he's trying to do a knowing carbon copy of a cheap cassette scare, then he hasn't gone far enough into deliberate homage to sell it as such. Shell should take us all the way over the edge, but it's too scared to take the plunge.
Shell is up for hire via streaming in the US, in Australia on 30 October and in the UK on 7 November
