Elisabeth Moss, Kate Hudson, and Kaia Gerber star in Shell, Max Minghella’s retro-futurist body-horror about the perils of being born with movie star looks; you either watch them fade or scratch and claw to keep them.
Gerber’s resemblance to her mother, Cindy Crawford, is uncanny enough to fuel the film’s metaphor before she even speaks.
Crawford was one of the original architects of modern beauty fetishism: the supermodel who made us all shell-polish our faces to perfection. Here, her daughter plays Chloe, a young influencer who, like ageing actress Samantha (Elisabeth Moss), is lured into a clinic offering gene-spliced cosmetic treatments derived from shellfish DNA.
They promise regeneration and immortality; you leave looking thirty per cent more alive, but something fishy is going on.
Minghella’s world is a slick near-future Melrose Place: self-driving taxis, chrome surfaces, and that bleached ‘80s video-horror sheen. The film wears its B-movie scales proudly, flashing fluorescent neon and wet-latex close-ups straight out of Videodrome.
Budget limitations show, but there’s a certain charm in how earnestly it tries to be both philosophical and gross. A few extra days of shooting might have smoothed its edges as the production was reportedly crammed into twenty-five days after COVID delays, but the roughness almost suits it. Every oyster needs grit to make a pearl.
Hudson is the film’s brightest shell: a fallen influencer selling eternal youth with a smile that’s part infomercial, part predator. She’s no longer the wide-eyed groupie of Almost Famous; she’s surfing the middle-aged Bermuda triangle that swallows so many talented women once Hollywood decides they’re past thirty-nine.
Hudson gives the film its bite, saltier than the script deserves. Moss, as a timid investigator, plays her deer-in-headlights arc well but could use more humour to offset the clinical gloom. Even Randall Park, usually good for a chuckle, is left adrift like a clam in fresh water.
Shell arrives in a moment obsessed with self-improvement and anti-ageing: the Bryan Johnson protocols, Ozempic jawlines, and Kardashian surgical sagas all echo through it.
Like Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, it revives the body-horror genre for an era that treats the body as a subscription service. But where Fargeat’s film had the budget and bravado to go full sea-monster, Minghella’s version skims the surface, more prawn cocktail than crustacean feast.
You wish it had leaned harder into its schlock and absurdity; the film keeps trying to be respectable when it should just crack its own shell and go feral.
Still, beneath the veneer, there’s something oddly affecting about watching a new generation of screen beauty literally inherit its mother’s face and then mutate it in the pursuit of perfection.
Shell is a film about how we polish ourselves until there’s nothing left inside. Not a classic, but maybe a cult snack: briny, uneven, and just edgy enough to stick between your teeth.
Shell opens in cinemas nationally from 30 October 2025.
Website: https://rialtodistribution.com/film/shell/
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See the trailer below:
Film details:
Title: Shell
Director: Max Minghella
Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Kate Hudson, Kaia Gerber
Country of Origin: United States
Rating: MA 15+
Duration: 100 mins
