Shell Review – The Actress Gets Overshadowed by Kate Hudson in Schlocky Curio

There are moments in the dumped low-budget shocker Shell that would make it seem like a wild inebriated cult favorite if described in isolation. Imagine the scene where the actress's seductive beauty mogul makes Elisabeth Moss to use a large sex toy while instructing her to gaze into a looking glass. Moreover, a cold open featuring former performer Elizabeth Berkley emotionally cutting away shells that have developed on her skin before being slaughtered by a unknown murderer. Then, Hudson presents an sophisticated feast of her discarded skin to eager guests. Plus, Kaia Gerber transforms into a massive sea creature...

If only Shell was as hilariously enjoyable as those descriptions suggest, but there's something oddly flat about it, with performer turned filmmaker Max Minghella finding it hard to provide the luridly indulgent pleasures 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 very little to offer for those who had no role in the filmmaking, feeling even less necessary given its unfortunate resemblance to The Substance. Each focus on an LA actor struggling to get the roles and recognition she believes is her due in a harsh business, wrongly evaluated for her looks who is then lured by a transformative treatment that offers quick results but has frightening drawbacks.

Even if Fargeat's version hadn't premiered last year at Cannes, ahead of Minghella's made its bow at the Toronto film festival, the parallel would still not be favorable. Even though I was not a big enthusiast of The Substance (a flashily produced, too drawn-out and hollow act of shock value somewhat rescued by a brilliant star turn) it had an undeniable stickiness, swiftly attaining 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 amount of substance to its and-then-what commentary (beauty standards for women are extremely harsh!), but it doesn't equal its extreme physical terror, the film finally evoking the kind of low-cost copycat that would have trailed The Substance to the rental shop back in the day (the Orca to its Jaws, the budget version etc).

Surprisingly starring by Moss, an performer not known for her levity, wrongly placed in a role that demands someone more willing to dive into the ridiculousness of the subject matter. She teamed up 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 lead that he decided to accommodate her being visibly six months pregnant, resulting in the star being awkwardly covered in a lot of oversized sweatshirts and outerwear. As an uncertain star seeking to fight her path into Hollywood with the help of a exoskeleton-inspired treatment, she might not really convince, but as the sleek 68-year-old CEO of a life-threatening beauty brand, Hudson is in significantly better form.

The actor, who remains a always underestimated star, is again a joy to watch, excelling at a specifically LA brand of insincere authenticity supported 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 suitable opponent and a sharper script, the film could have come across like a deliriously nasty cross between a 1950s female melodrama and an 1980s monster movie, 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 biting or as intelligent as it might have been, social commentary kept to its most obvious (the finale centering 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 produce, his film as bluntly, lethargically directed as a afternoon serial 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 taken it sufficiently into conscious mimicry to convince the audience. Shell should take us all the way into madness, but it's too scared to make the jump.

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