Shell Review – Elisabeth Moss Gets Outshone by Her Co-Star in Bizarre Horror

There are sequences in the dumped B-movie frightfest Shell that would make it seem like a wild five-wines-in cult favorite if taken out of context. Picture the segment where the actress's vampy wellness CEO compels Elisabeth Moss to use a large sex toy while instructing her to gaze into a reflective surface. Additionally, a abrupt beginning starring former dancer Elizabeth Berkley emotionally hacking off shells that have developed on her flesh before being killed by a unknown murderer. Next, Hudson presents an refined meal of her shed epidermis to enthused guests. And, Kaia Gerber becomes a enormous crustacean...

I wish Shell was as wildly entertaining as the summaries imply, but there's something curiously lifeless about it, with performer turned filmmaker Max Minghella having difficulty to provide the excessive delights that something as absurd as this so obviously needs. It's never quite obvious what or why Shell is and its intended audience, a low-budget experiment with very little to offer for those who weren't involved in the filmmaking, feeling even less necessary given its regrettable similarity to The Substance. The two center on an Hollywood performer fighting to get the jobs and fame she thinks she deserves in a cruel industry, unjustly judged for her appearance who is then lured by a game-changing procedure that grants immediate benefits but has frightening drawbacks.

Although Fargeat's version hadn't debuted last year at Cannes, four months before Minghella's was shown at the Toronto film festival, the parallel would still not be flattering. Although I was not a huge admirer of The Substance (a gaudily crafted, excessively lengthy and hollow act of provocation somewhat rescued by a brilliant star turn) it had an unmistakable memorability, easily finding its rightful spot within the pop culture (expect it to be one of the most parodied films in next year's Scary Movie 6). Shell has about the same level of depth to its predictable message (beauty standards for women are impossibly punishing!), but it doesn't equal its exaggerated grotesquery, the film ultimately resembling 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 knock-off etc).

Surprisingly starring by Moss, an actress not known for her lightness, poorly suited in a role that demands someone more ready to embrace the ridiculousness of the subject matter. She worked with Minghella on The Handmaid's Tale (one can understand why they both might crave a break from that show's relentless darkness), and he was so desperate for her to headline that he decided to accommodate her being noticeably six months pregnant, leading to the star being distractingly hidden in a lot of big hoodies and jackets. As an self-doubting performer seeking to fight her path into Hollywood with the help of a crustaceous skin routine, she might not really sell the role, but as the sinister 68-year-old CEO of a life-threatening beauty brand, Hudson is in significantly better form.

The actress, who remains a always underestimated star, is again a delight to watch, mastering a distinctly Hollywood style of insincere authenticity underscored by something truly menacing and it's in her all-too-brief scenes that we see what the film might have achieved. Matched with a more suitable co-star and a more incisive script, the film could have come across like a feverishly mean cross between a mid-century women's drama 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 biting or as smart as it could be, satire kept to its most obvious (the climax centering on the use of an NDA is funnier in concept than realization). Minghella doesn't seem sure in what he's really trying to make, his film as simply, ploddingly shot as a afternoon serial with an equally rubbishy music. If he's trying to do a winking exact duplicate of a bottom shelf VHS horror, then he hasn't taken it sufficiently into conscious mimicry to convince the audience. Shell should take us all the way into madness, but it's too fearful to make the jump.

• Shell is available to rent online in the US, in Australia on 30 October and in the UK on 7 November