It must be disappointing to be Max Minghella. Through no fault of his own, the Handmaid’s Tale and Social Network star turned-director of Shell has made a film that will forever be shackled to the plot of another, much more successful movie. In today’s cinematic landscape, where social media pits similar films against each other in real-time, this creative overlap is a death sentence.
Shell Review
The story of an aging actress who explores the dark underbelly of the wellness world to recapture her youth is so similar to Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance that the comparison will likely be the only conversation the film ever has. While Shell is by no means a rip-off, and in some ways is a more coherent narrative, it’s an overwhelmingly less challenging and interesting take that ultimately feels a bit pointless.
Elisabeth Moss stars as Samantha Lake, an actress whose career is fading into obscurity. We see her suffer through the ultimate Hollywood humiliation: a script reading where the directors openly trash-talk her performance.
Her desperation makes her the perfect mark for Zoe Shannon (an excellent Kate Hudson), the charismatic, Gwyneth Paltrow-style CEO of a wellness company called SHELL. Zoe embodies the toxic positivity of the wellness industry, promising Samantha what she desires most: eternal youth and a return to glory. It’s an offer that’s impossible for her to refuse.
The promise of eternal youth in a film can never be bargained for without serious repercussions. Here, Shell deviates from its cinematic cousin. Instead of focusing on the internal corruption of its lead character, the film becomes a mystery. Samantha gets entrenched in the weird and gross underbelly of side effects gone wrong as she begins to investigate the disappearance of a much younger colleague (Kaia Gerber) who was also a client of SHELL.
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Along the way, a few interesting twists are made, and the film’s black comedy tone, born from Jack Stanley’s script and Minghella’s direction, is done rather well. But the story takes far too long to get to its insane ending, a finale that loses much of its shock value by feeling inevitably similar to Fargeat’s major hit.
From a cinematic perspective, this is where the film ultimately falls deepest into the shadow of The Substance. A story this visceral, about the horrors of the flesh and the violence of vanity, demands an expressive visual style, but Shell is shockingly timid. The cinematography isn’t particularly interesting, and the editing is rather plain. Minghella directs it like a standard drama, not the go-for-broke body horror it wants to be.
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While Shell hits a more consistent story with a more pointed commentary, it also feels like watching a muted, grayscale version of something that should be in vibrant, bloody color. It’s just disappointing.
The performances are the film’s strongest asset. Elisabeth Moss is pretty good, playing Samantha with a morose, slouching appearance that makes her career anxieties feel physical. Since this was filmed five months into Moss’ pregnancy, she has a doughiness that plays into the self-hatred her character has. Kate Hudson is excellent as the slick, smiling face of corporate evil, and the rest of the cast is an interesting group that does their jobs well.
Is Shell worth watching?
Perhaps the most frustrating part of Shell is that, on its own, it’s a perfectly decent and well-acted film. Its competence is what makes its lack of originality feel even more pronounced; a wild, glorious failure would have been more interesting than this polished, timid echo. It’s a fascinating story anchored with good direction and a cast that makes it a decent time.
In the end, Shell feels like a shell of a more interesting film. While it’s not a poorly made movie, it’s hard to shake the feeling that you’ve seen a version of this story told with more vision and guts. It’s fun enough, but it’s certainly not one of the most interesting films of the year, existing more as a curious footnote than a statement of its own.
Shell is now available on VOD.
