‘Shell’ Review: Elisabeth Moss’ So-So Body Horror Wishes It Were ‘The Substance’
It’s a shame for Max Minghella’s “Shell,” a broadly comedic body horror film about an actress who undergoes a strange treatment to cling to youth, that it’s coming out after Coralie Fargeat’s “The Substance” made such a big, bold and bloody splash at Cannes. Not only will this largely less successful film inevitably live in the shadow of that far more audacious one, but it will likely be compared to it in a litany of ways that don’t do it any favors.
However, there is always a big tent for horror and just because each shares a similar premise doesn’t mean that they can’t find their own joy in their respective executions. This is especially true as there’s something uniquely silly about “Shell” near the end, but it takes quite a while to get there. Even with a more gleeful performance by Kate Hudson, “Shell” is merely a fine film that’s far too tame to completely pay off.
Ultimately getting tangled up in itself and pulling its punches at key points, it’s a work that’s actually closer to “Nightbitch,” which screened a few days prior to it, in how it wants to offer serious observations while flirting with body horror. Alas, despite taking a far bigger plunge into absurdity in the final act, “Shell” falls short of that lower bar too, never finding the necessary layers in terms of craft or theme to make their peeling back into something fully entertaining.
The film, which premiered Thursday at the Toronto International Film Festival, takes place in the not-too-distant future and follows TV star Samantha (Elisabeth Moss) as she tries to continue acting in an industry mostly interested in casting her aside. She’s keeping at it, but even when she gets asked to come out for a role where she was told the director would be there, she loses it to a younger influencer who, in addition to being wrong for the part, doesn’t seem to care about acting except as a way to expand her brand. Frustrated with the whole thing, Samantha is told she should try out a treatment from the immediately evil-seeming company Shell that will give her back some of her youth. Though initially skeptical, she does it — and suddenly begins finding her life completely turning around. She’s getting roles and also makes a new friend in Shell CEO Zoe Shannon (Hudson), who becomes an integral part of her life. How great is that?
Well, as it turns out, not so great. In addition to the treatment having troubling side effects, it seems as though there may be more at play at the shadowy company. Just as she begins experiencing major skin problems in the form of painful lesions, another woman she knows who went through the treatment disappears. The film is then an occasionally odd little caper of sorts where we go along with Samantha as she must take part in car chases in slow self-driving taxis, butt heads with Zoe who wants nothing more than to silence her, and find out the truth of Shell.
Despite an opening scene that gestures towards embracing slasher shenanigans, this film ends up being mostly straight-faced for a good amount of its runtime. Every time Hudson comes into a scene, “Shell” gets a welcome jolt of energy, but Moss is stuck in neutral as her character remains perpetually both one step behind the audience and the counterbalance to the chaos. What provides its biggest kick in the pants is the ending when all this is thrown out the window.
The exact manner of this throwing is best left to the film as it’s a pretty sizable shift. It basically becomes a creature feature and gets a fair bit of mileage out of this, though the film had still been struggling to maintain full steam before getting here. That it gets appropriately squishy and violent is a nice reward to cap off the whole thing, though this alone can’t redeem the entire affair. For all the broadly amusing bits, this ending chunk is where it feels like the film is, finally, actually breaking out of its shell to get into some more madcap, meatier fun. One can only wish that the whole ride had been able to bottle up this energy and willingness to have things truly go off the rails. Many films need to start slow and then build to the madness, though “Shell” takes its sweet time getting there. It is perhaps worth the wait once, but the meandering route is unlikely to be worthwhile on a second viewing.
If you consider “Shell” the B-side to “The Substance,” you’ll probably come away feeling a whole lot less crabby about its many shortcomings and find yourself willing to wait for the much bigger swings that it takes. At the same time, you’ll likely wish it was a great deal snappier far sooner. After all, time is of the essence for a film like this, and none of us are getting any younger.
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