Shell Review – The Actress Gets Substance-d by Kate Hudson in Bizarre Horror

There are moments in the released B-movie frightfest Shell that might present it like a giddy inebriated camp classic if viewed separately. Picture the segment where the actress's vampy beauty mogul compels her co-star to masturbate with a giant vibrator while making her stare into a reflective surface. There's also, a abrupt beginning highlighting former dancer Elizabeth Berkley sadly cutting away shells that have developed on her flesh before being killed by a hooded assailant. Then, Hudson serves an sophisticated feast of her shed epidermis to excited diners. Furthermore, Kaia Gerber becomes a enormous crustacean...

It's a shame Shell was as wildly entertaining as the summaries imply, but there's something strangely dull about it, with performer turned filmmaker Max Minghella having difficulty to provide the over-the-top thrills that something as absurd as this so plainly demands. The purpose remains unclear what or why Shell is and its intended audience, a inexpensive endeavor with few attractions for those who had no role in the production, feeling even less necessary given its regrettable similarity to The Substance. The two focus on an LA actor fighting to get the roles and recognition she believes is her due in a ruthless field, unfairly critiqued for her looks who is then lured by a transformative treatment that provides instant rewards but has frightening drawbacks.

Even if Fargeat's version hadn't premiered last year at Cannes, ahead of Minghella's was unveiled at the Toronto film festival, the contrast would still not be flattering. While I was not a huge admirer of The Substance (a gaudily crafted, too drawn-out and empty act of provocation mildly saved by a stellar acting) it had an unmistakable memorability, easily finding its appropriate niche 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 obvious social critique (expectations for women's looks are extremely harsh!), but it fails to rival its exaggerated grotesquery, the film in the end recalling the kind of low-cost copycat that would have come after The Substance to the rental shop back in the day (the Orca to its Jaws, the Critters to its Gremlins etc).

It's strangely led by Moss, an actor not known for her levity, miscast in a role that demands someone more eager to lean into the silliness of the genre. She collaborated with Minghella on The Handmaid's Tale (one can understand why they both might long for a break from that show's relentless darkness), and he was so desperate for her to star that he decided to accommodate her being visibly six months pregnant, resulting in the star being obviously concealed in a lot of bulky jackets and outerwear. As an self-doubting performer seeking to elbow her way into Hollywood with the help of a crustaceous skin routine, she might not really persuade, but as the sleek 68-year-old CEO of a dangerous beauty brand, Hudson is in far greater control.

The actor, who remains a consistently overlooked talent, is again a pleasure to watch, perfecting a particular West Coast variety of pretend sincerity backed up 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 fitting co-star and a more incisive script, the film could have come across like a feverishly mean cross between a 1950s female melodrama and an decade-old beast flick, something Death Becomes Her did so brilliantly.

But the script, from Jack Stanley, who also wrote the just as flaccid action thriller Lou, is never as sharp or as smart as it could be, satire kept to its most transparent (the climax centering on the use of an NDA is funnier in idea than execution). Minghella doesn't seem certain in what he's really trying to produce, his film as simply, slowly filmed as a TV drama with an just as bad soundtrack. If he's trying to do a self-aware exact duplicate of a bottom shelf VHS horror, then he hasn't pushed hard enough into conscious mimicry to make it believable. Shell should take us all the way over the edge, but it's too scared to make the jump.

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