Lousy sequel to Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
dir: Max Minghella
2024
When I randomly found out about a film I’d never heard of, that was made around the same time as The Substance, with similar themes and a body horror aesthetic, only starring Elisabeth Moss and released without much if any fanfare, I was surprised. Astounded, even.
I mean, she’s a pretty big star, maybe not in movies, but she’s been in pretty well known tv series, from Mad Men to Handmaid’s Tale to Shining Girls to some incomprehensible spy series on Amazon whose name escapes me. She’s a somebody, probably better known than Demi Moore was when their two rival films came out. So I was still a bit perplexed.
And then I watched the flick. Now I understand why it was buried.
It’s pretty shit.
That explains it.
Actor Max Minghella, somewhat known, and son of acclaimed director Anthony Minghella, didn’t inherit any of his father’s directorial abilities, because this flick is poorly directed, poorly constructed, poorly shot and put together and not well thought out. It’s a real shame.
Once I realised just how crappy this was going to be, I wondered if they were going to go the “so bad it’s secretly good / deliberately bad because we want it to be a camp classic!” route, but it’s not a camp anything. It’s just unironically bad – bad.
Films and tv series that focus on the insanity of businesses that profit from tormenting women based on their insecurities is a rich, fertile, endlessly renewable resource. We know this because films keep telling us how society only values women for their beauty and their youth, and once they lose those they’re less than worthless and they’re a burden on society. Instead of interrogating the underpinning misogyny inherent in the patriarchal systems that force these expectations upon women, most flicks are content to just go down the “ain’t these bitches vain?” and blame them for what comes next, which is usually body horror stuff to emphasise the fear of the monstrous feminine.
The Substance was hardly a feminist masterpiece, but what it did do is use its strong visuals to tell a bonkers story not about how far someone will go to stay youthful, but more so how idiotic it would be to create a younger version of yourself through technology and then turn into a hideous mound monster that shoots milk everywhere.
Shell isn’t even as clever as that. The premise here is, an aging actress is bullied into starting a regimen / undergoes genetic manipulation, and for a minute it makes her look a bit younger, but then she starts mutating. Did you ever think there would be side effects to remaining forever young? That never occurred to nobody ever!
Moss plays an actress who’s not getting the roles anymore. She was on a series when she was younger, but now struggles to even get auditions.
It’s because she’s not in her thirties anymore, okay? And maybe she’s not as slender as her heyday on the show Hannah Has a Heart, but she’s still putting herself out there!
What is additionally funny, or at least funny to me, is Elisabeth Moss, multi-talented, multi-awarded actor is actually pregnant playing a role in a movie where agents, casting people, random people on the street are telling her she looks like shit, and she pretty much agrees with them in order to make it believable that she’d undergo this bizarre procedure.
To perhaps make it more believable, they also give the character psoriasis, so that apart from vanity being her primary motivation, and looking more aligned to what Hollywood might want, they give her a painful skin condition she might want relief from.
The CEO of this particular company that conveniently shares its title with that of the film is played by Kate Hudson, who is meant to be the personification of her brand: eternally youthful looking, sexually aggressive and otherwise utterly perplexing. At no stage did I understand what this character was doing, or why. I actually think Kate Hudson is a tremendous actor, and I’ve seen her be really great in some roles in which I expected nothing, but she can also be mediocre, as is almost everyone in this, when there’s no feel for the material or no decent material to have a feel for.
After Sam undergoes the procedure, she looks the same, but she gets the role she was after, photoshoots, a better apartment, she feels more confident, and wouldn’t you know it, the CEO of Shell which, you know, is a bit hard to accept given that there’s this other multinational corporation called Shell that's been around for, I dunno, a century fucking up the planet, invites her to her Christmas party!
At this party, for no reason, Hudson’s character Zoe Shannon insists that everyone eats their dinner, and leave no crumbs, when that dinner consists of pieces of shell she has shed at some point off screen. Because you see part of the treatment involves using the DNA of certain creatures that don’t seem to experience senescence, whose telomeres don’t unravel with time.
And that means that all these awful people, including Sam, including Zoe, have lobster DNA in their genome. Which means, I guess, Zoe sloughs off bits of lobster shell?
I mean, it’s icky as a concept, but we don’t eat lobster shells anyway? Why… is anyone eating Zoe’s lobster shell? You might use them in a lobster bisque, by pureeing the shells after hours of simmering, but… you wouldn’t just eat the shell?
That scene was as perplexing to me, maybe even more so, than the one that immediately follows, where Sam, wandering around Zoe’s palatial estate, spies Zoe masturbating, and keeps spying a little bit too long before being found out.
Awkward, very awkward, but nowhere as awkward as what follows. And look, I’m just reporting on what I saw, I’m not making anything up: I’m not some fantasist that gets off on making things up and lying to people about them. Also, I was completely sober when I saw this, and no drugs whatsoever were involved while I watched this, so I didn’t hallucinate anything: Instead of being upset at the invasion of privacy, Zoe insists that Sam has to avail herself of one of Zoe’s array of, um, devices, when she hands her this massive golden, um, device and insists Sam must pleasure herself with it until the point of satisfaction or Zoe will be displeased.
Zoe insists, “I’ll know if you haven’t.”
Sam then, dutifully, does as told, it is implied, and they share a knowing nod as Sam leaves the estate.
What the absolute fuck?
That’s not even salacious, or raunchy or anything: it makes about as much story-sense as the eating of the shells at dinner.
Things improve professionally but not personally for Sam (other than that she shags some guy at the vet clinic?), when not only does her psoriasis return, but she starts getting these blue scaly growths pop out all over her body. She’s concerned! Are these side-effects? What’s going on? Why is she throwing up blue bile onto her co-workers? And is this going to reflect badly at her next performance review?
And I wonder if Chloe Benson, Chloe Benson, Chloe Benson is ever going to reappear? I mention Chloe Benson because the movie mentions her continuously, even though she’s not around, so much so that you’d think Chloe Benson is a character played by Tom Cruise. But she’s not played by Tom Cruise. She’s played by Kaia Gerber. And she’s young! Yet she had the Shell procedure done, even though she’s super young. But she disappeared! I wonder if she’ll reappear in the finale of the movie?
Maybe as a giant lobster that kills all the baddies?
The movie early on establishes that Zoe is a financial genius and the richest person on Earth, but I question her business acumen. Apparently she sells a product and a service that turns a portion of her customers into mutated freaks, and so she then dispatches this thin blonde weirdo who wears red leather gloves who kills the unsatisfied customers.
That… that wouldn’t work in the short term or the long term, if you have to kill your customers. Maybe in the medium term, but, no, not likely. Yet even then when Sam starts showing symptoms the genius business person sends goons to kill everyone.
The flick pretends that Kate Hudson is having fun, kicking ass, leaning in, girlbossing, all those bullshit memes, but it’s a terribly underwritten role, and Hudson can only do so much. She won’t be remembered for this role at all.
This movie has 1 jump scare, and it involves a cat. Does that count as satire, as satirical of movies? Amidst all of this stupidity I just want to mention that it’s all well and good of me to hold up elements of this shitty production in order to say “ha ha, what a shitty production”, but what I feel obligated to mention is that if this sounds like it was enjoyable or entertaining to watch, it was not. There is a very minor pleasure involved in watching something quite inept and marvelling at how such a thing could get made, but it’s not a healthy pleasure; it’s pretty aggravating, actually.
I put no blame on Elisabeth Moss for any of this: She’s game and down for whatever, but she was quite pregnant at the time, and probably would have had better things to do, like maybe have a long lie-down instead of starring in this flick. I am guessing since they worked together in Handmaid’s Tale that she did this as a favour to Max Minghella out of friendship, but, damn, some flicks are just not worth it, and this is one of them.
4 times this will only ever be referred to, if at all, as a cheapy cash-in trying to piggyback onto The Substance’s bandwagon out of 10
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“How you look determines who survives. There’s only so much room at the top of the food chain.” – that’s not… not how food chains work, Zoe - Shell
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