Shell Review – Elisabeth Moss Gets Overshadowed by Her Co-Star in Oddball Film

There are moments in the dumped B-movie frightfest Shell that could paint it as like a giddy inebriated camp classic if viewed separately. Imagine the segment where Kate Hudson's glamorous health guru forces Elisabeth Moss to use a giant vibrator while forcing her to look into a looking glass. Moreover, a abrupt beginning featuring former dancer Elizabeth Berkley tearfully cutting away growths that have developed on her flesh before being slaughtered by a hooded assailant. Subsequently, Hudson offers an sophisticated feast of her shed epidermis to enthused attendees. And, Kaia Gerber turns into a giant lobster...

It's a shame Shell was as hilariously enjoyable as that all makes it sound, but there's something oddly flat about it, with performer turned filmmaker Max Minghella having difficulty to provide the over-the-top thrills that something as absurd as this so obviously needs. Audiences may wonder what or why Shell is and who it might be for, a cheaply made lark with minimal appeal for those who had no role in the project, feeling even less necessary given its unfortunate resemblance to The Substance. Each highlight an LA actor struggling to get the roles and recognition she believes is her due in a harsh business, unjustly judged for her looks who is then seduced by a transformative treatment that offers quick results but has terrifying consequences.

Although Fargeat's version hadn't premiered last year at Cannes, ahead of Minghella's was unveiled at the Toronto film festival, the parallel would still not be favorable. Although I was not a big enthusiast of The Substance (a flashily produced, overlong and shallow act of provocation mildly saved by a killer lead performance) it had an clear lasting power, easily finding its deserved place 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 and-then-what commentary (expectations for women's looks are impossibly punishing!), but it doesn't equal its over-the-top body horror, the film ultimately resembling the kind of low-cost copycat that would have trailed The Substance to the rental shop back in the day (the lesser counterpart, the Critters to its Gremlins etc).

Surprisingly starring by Moss, an performer not known for her humor, miscast in a role that requires someone more eager to embrace the silliness of the territory. She worked with Minghella on The Handmaid's Tale (one can understand why they both might crave a break from that show's unrelenting bleakness), and he was so determined for her to headline that he decided to adjust for her being clearly six months pregnant, leading to the star being distractingly hidden in a lot of big hoodies and outerwear. As an insecure actor 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 sleek 68-year-old CEO of a hazardous beauty brand, Hudson is in far greater control.

The performer, who remains a consistently overlooked talent, is again a joy to watch, perfecting a particular West Coast variety of pretend sincerity supported by something truly menacing and it's in her unfortunately limited scenes that we see what the film could have been. Paired with a more suitable opponent and a sharper script, the film could have played like a deliriously nasty cross between a 50s “woman's picture” and an 1980s monster movie, something Death Becomes Her did so wonderfully well.

But the script, from Jack Stanley, who also wrote the similarly limp action thriller Lou, is never as acidic or as smart as it should have been, satire kept to its most blatant (the ending relying on the use of an NDA is more amusing in theory than delivery). Minghella doesn't seem sure in what he's really trying to make, his film as bluntly, lethargically directed as a daytime soap with an equally rubbishy soundtrack. If he's trying to do a self-aware exact duplicate of a low-rent tape fright, then he hasn't gone far enough into deliberate homage to make it believable. Shell should take us all the way to the brink, but it's too fearful to make the jump.

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