Pulchritudinous. It sounds dirty but it means pretty. It’s a word that Kate Hudson’s character, Zoe Shannon is enamoured of in Max Minghella’s SHELL.
Superior B picture in the vein of The Substance, SHELL takes its name from the health and wellness company Zoe founded and runs. Into her orbit comes struggling actor, Samantha Lake, a performer who has tasted fame but whose career is somewhat on the wane.
Samantha signs up for Zoe’s revolutionary age and beauty therapy which consists of crustacean essence impregnated in the body and her career, along with her body, is revitalised. But, of course, the procedure has a sinister side, with gruesome side effects. It’s worse than crabs with scales and scabs!.
Hudson bestows an horrific hubris to Zoe’s zealous capitalism and Elizabeth Moss as Samantha draws on decades of industry experience to bring fire and bite to her performance.
SHELL is a prawnographic creature feature with its unabashedly campy vibe nestled into a tale of age, mortality, vanity and the big business beauty industry, the pursuit of perfection as a pernicious endeavour.
Alongside Moss and Hudson, SHELL boasts an impressive supporting cast including Kaia Gerber as a young actress already stressing about ageing at twenty something, Estie Haim as Sam’s bestie, Lydia, and Peter MacNicol as the Dr. Strangelove-like inventor of the procedure, Thaddeus Brand.
SHELL has fun mixing its styles and customs, a future world sitting simultaneously with hints of the past, a shrimp cocktail of schlock and sophistication. To quote director, Max Minghella, SHELL is like a dinner party in which an electic array of ghosts are invited to eat together. Death Becomes Her splits a steak with Species, while Sliver and Soapdish share a cigarette.
Go well, go SHELL, it’s worth putting down a lobster for.
