Film Analysis – The Actress Gets Overshadowed by Kate Hudson in Schlocky Curio

There are sequences in the released low-budget shocker Shell that would make it seem like a frivolous five-wines-in camp classic if viewed separately. Picture the scene where Kate Hudson's vampy health guru makes her co-star to use a enormous device while making her stare into a looking glass. Moreover, a abrupt beginning starring former Showgirl Elizabeth Berkley sadly removing growths that have appeared on her flesh before being slaughtered by a unknown murderer. Next, Hudson serves an elegant dinner of her shed epidermis to excited diners. Plus, Kaia Gerber becomes a enormous crustacean...

I wish Shell was as outrageously fun as the summaries imply, but there's something curiously lifeless about it, with actor-turned-director Max Minghella finding it hard to provide the excessive delights that something as absurd as this so obviously needs. It's never quite obvious what or why Shell is and its intended audience, a inexpensive endeavor with very little to offer for those who had no role in the project, appearing more superfluous given its regrettable similarity to The Substance. The two focus on an Hollywood performer striving to get the jobs and fame she believes is her due in a harsh business, unjustly judged for her appearance who is then seduced by a transformative treatment that grants immediate benefits but has horrifying side effects.

Though Fargeat's version hadn't launched last year at Cannes, four months before Minghella's was shown at the Toronto film festival, the parallel would still not be flattering. While I was not a big enthusiast of The Substance (a garishly made, excessively lengthy and shallow act of deliberate offense somewhat rescued by a brilliant star turn) it had an unmistakable memorability, easily finding its deserved place 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 and-then-what commentary (beauty standards for women are impossibly punishing!), but it can't match its exaggerated grotesquery, the film ultimately resembling the kind of cheap imitation that would have followed The Substance to the VHS outlet back in the day (the lesser counterpart, the Critters to its Gremlins etc).

Surprisingly starring by Moss, an actress not known for her lightness, poorly suited in a role that needs someone more willing to embrace the absurdity of the territory. She collaborated with Minghella on The Handmaid's Tale (one can see why they both might crave a break from that show's unrelenting bleakness), and he was so eager for her to star that he decided to work around her being clearly six months pregnant, cue the star being distractingly hidden in a lot of big hoodies and jackets. As an insecure actor seeking to elbow her way into Hollywood with the help of a exoskeleton-inspired treatment, she might not really convince, but as the slithering 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 delight to watch, perfecting a distinctly Hollywood style of insincere authenticity supported by something genuinely sinister and it's in her regrettably short scenes that we see what the film could have been. Coupled with a more comfortable co-star and a sharper script, the film could have unfolded like a deliriously nasty cross between a 50s “woman's picture” and an 80s creature feature, something Death Becomes Her did so wonderfully well.

But the script, from Jack Stanley, who also wrote the just as flaccid action thriller Lou, is never as sharp or as clever as it could be, satire kept to its most obvious (the climax hinging on the use of an NDA is more amusing in idea than delivery). Minghella doesn't seem certain in what he's really trying to create, his film as simply, slowly filmed as a daytime soap with an equally rubbishy score. If he's trying to do a winking direct imitation of a cheap cassette scare, then he hasn't gone far enough into deliberate homage 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 available to rent via streaming in the US, in Australia on 30 October and in the UK on 7 November