Film Analysis – The Actress Gets Outshone by Her Co-Star in Oddball Film

There are sequences in the unveiled schlock horror Shell that would make it seem like a giddy five-wines-in kitschy gem if taken out of context. Envision the scene where the actress's seductive health guru compels her co-star to use a giant vibrator while making her stare into a looking glass. There's also, a cold open featuring former Showgirl Elizabeth Berkley sadly removing shells that have developed on her skin before being slaughtered by a masked killer. Next, Hudson serves an elegant dinner of her shed epidermis to excited guests. And, Kaia Gerber becomes a massive sea creature...

I wish Shell was as hilariously enjoyable 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 absurd as this so clearly requires. It's never quite obvious what or why Shell is and its intended audience, a inexpensive endeavor with few attractions for those who had no role in the production, seeming more redundant given its regrettable similarity to The Substance. Both focus on an Hollywood performer fighting to get the attention and work she thinks she deserves in a ruthless field, unfairly critiqued for her physical traits who is then lured by a game-changing procedure that grants immediate benefits but has frightening drawbacks.

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 gaudily crafted, overlong and shallow act of shock value somewhat rescued by a killer lead performance) it had an clear lasting power, readily securing its appropriate niche within the entertainment world (expect it to be one of the most parodied films in next year's Scary Movie 6). Shell has about the same degree of insight to its obvious social critique (female appearance ideals are extremely harsh!), but it can't match its extreme physical terror, the film in the end recalling the kind of low-cost copycat that would have trailed The Substance to the video store back in the day (the Orca to its Jaws, the Critters to its Gremlins etc).

It's strangely led by Moss, an performer not known for her humor, wrongly placed in a role that demands someone more ready to dive into the ridiculousness of the territory. She teamed up with Minghella on The Handmaid's Tale (one can see why they both might desire a break from that show's unrelenting bleakness), and he was so determined for her to star that he decided to accommodate her being clearly six months pregnant, cue the star being obviously concealed in a lot of bulky jackets and coats. As an insecure actor 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 life-threatening beauty brand, Hudson is in far greater control.

The actor, who remains a always underestimated star, is again a pleasure to watch, perfecting a distinctly Hollywood style of faux-earnest fakeness underscored by something genuinely sinister and it's in her all-too-brief scenes that we see what the film had the potential to become. Coupled with a more comfortable co-star and a wittier script, the film could have played like a wildly vicious cross between a mid-century women's drama 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 acidic or as smart as it could be, mockery kept to its most transparent (the climax centering on the use of an NDA is funnier in idea than realization). Minghella doesn't seem certain in what he's really trying to make, his film as plainly, ploddingly shot as a TV drama with an just as bad music. If he's trying to do a winking carbon copy of a cheap cassette scare, then he hasn't gone far enough into conscious mimicry to sell it as such. Shell should take us all the way to the brink, but it's too fearful to take the plunge.

• Shell is offered for rental digitally in the US, in Australia on 30 October and in the UK on 7 November