Main cast: Elisabeth Moss (Samantha Lake), Kate Hudson (Zoe Shannon), Arian Moayed (Dr Hubert), Este Haim (Lydia), Elizabeth Berkley (Jenna Janero), and Kaia Gerber (Chloe Benson)
Director: Max Minghella

Shell is one of those movies that serve to remind mere mortals that women would pay dearly should they dare to aspire to be youthful or beautiful. Considering how nearly all of Hollywood folks have body parts that are younger than their great-grandchildren, such movies always come off as hypocritical finger-wagging at mere mortals that want to look as good as these Hollywood people. 

Elizabeth Moss, wearing very loose clothes to convince people that she is fat and frumpy, is Samantha Lake, who at 40 learns that her acting career has come to a screeching halt as she is now relegated to “eeuw” and losing roles to younger ladies, like Chloe Benson that she used to babysit. 

She decides to try out the services of a beauty clinic called Shell, whose CEO is Zoe Shannon that is 68 looking 40. Naturally, she is soon hot and beautiful… until the side effects show up, that is. 

These side effects are revealed in an opening scene, which serves to give Elizabeth Berkley a paycheck and to ruin whatever suspense that may otherwise exist in the film. Oh no, whoever gets the “surgery” at Shell will grow scales and — hmm, looking at the movie poster, I guess they become giant mutant lobsters? That can’t be right… oh my god, that is the twist. 

So, there is no suspense here. How about the body horror? Well, there are some occasional scales that don’t look like they can’t be treated by a dermatologist, some bloody moments in the opening scene that is 95% of the body horror count, and a cartoon lobster monster toward the end. Duds all around.

Sigh, how about the satirical elements then? Well, Samantha still becomes hot and famous at the end, which means she doesn’t really have to face any consequences for her vanity or career choice or whatever this movie claims her “crime” is. So, the protagonist gets a net gain anyway for signing up to Shell so… what’s so bad about this?

It’s also hard to believe that a veteran in the movie industry can be as mousy and dim-witted as Samantha. She acts more like a fat bag lady that for some reason wakes up one morning and decides that she’s going to audition for lead roles despite knowing nothing about the industry. Kate Hudson fares better as the villain, but her character is so one-dimensional that Zoe never makes much of an impact in the end.

In the end, this movie doesn’t dare to commit so it ends up being a nothing burger. It won’t commit to being a body horror film despite being marketed as one. It blatantly hints at some lesbian subtext between Zoe and Samantha but again doesn’t dare to commit to doing anything with that. It claims to be satire but doesn’t commit to making the protagonist learn anything or suffer in any way. So, what satire? 

Because the film doesn’t dare to commit to anything, I’d say folks may as well don’t commit their time to it. Go watch something else more interesting.