Film Analysis – Elisabeth Moss Gets Overshadowed by Her Co-Star in Schlocky Curio

There are scenes in the unveiled schlock horror Shell that would make it seem like a frivolous tipsy kitschy gem if viewed separately. Picture the scene where the actress's seductive wellness CEO makes Elisabeth Moss to use a giant vibrator while making her stare into a reflective surface. Moreover, a abrupt beginning highlighting former performer Elizabeth Berkley tearfully removing shells that have grown on her skin before being slaughtered by a unknown murderer. Next, Hudson presents an refined meal of her discarded skin to enthused diners. Plus, Kaia Gerber becomes a enormous crustacean...

I wish Shell was as wildly entertaining as that all makes it sound, but there's something curiously lifeless about it, with performer turned filmmaker 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 the target viewers, a cheaply made lark with few attractions for those who had no role in the filmmaking, feeling even less necessary given its regrettable similarity to The Substance. Both center on an Los Angeles star striving to get the roles and recognition she feels entitled to in a cruel industry, unfairly critiqued for her physical traits who is then tempted by a game-changing procedure that provides instant rewards but has frightening drawbacks.

Even if Fargeat's version hadn't debuted last year at Cannes, preceding Minghella's made its bow at the Toronto film festival, the parallel would still not be flattering. Although I was not a particular fan of The Substance (a flashily produced, excessively lengthy and shallow act of deliberate offense somewhat rescued by a stellar acting) it had an clear lasting power, easily finding its rightful spot within the pop culture (expect it to be one of the most satirized features in next year's Scary Movie 6). Shell has about the same degree of insight to its predictable message (expectations for women's looks are unreasonably brutal!), but it can't match its extreme physical terror, the film finally evoking the kind of low-cost copycat that would have come after The Substance to the rental shop back in the day (the lesser counterpart, the Critters to its Gremlins etc).

Surprisingly starring by Moss, an actor not known for her lightness, poorly suited in a role that demands someone more eager to dive into the absurdity of the territory. She worked 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 noticeably six months pregnant, cue the star being obviously concealed in a lot of bulky jackets and outerwear. As an insecure actor seeking to elbow her way into Hollywood with the help of a shell-based beauty regimen, she might not really persuade, but as the slithering 68-year-old CEO of a hazardous beauty brand, Hudson is in significantly better form.

The performer, who remains a always underestimated star, is again a delight to watch, perfecting a specifically LA brand of insincere authenticity underscored by something genuinely sinister and it's in her unfortunately limited scenes that we see what the film could have been. Coupled with a more comfortable opponent and a more incisive script, the film could have come across like a deliriously nasty cross between a 1950s female melodrama and an decade-old beast flick, something Death Becomes Her did so exceptionally.

But the script, from Jack Stanley, who also wrote the equally weak action thriller Lou, is never as acidic or as intelligent as it should have been, social commentary kept to its most transparent (the ending relying on the use of an NDA is more amusing in idea than realization). Minghella doesn't seem sure in what he's really trying to produce, his film as simply, lethargically directed as a TV drama with an similarly poor music. If he's trying to do a self-aware exact duplicate of a cheap cassette scare, 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 fearful to make the jump.

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