Body horror and the feminist critique of society get along exceedingly well, almost as if the two genres were made for each other. Consider Roger Corman’s 1959 “The Wasp Woman,” in which a female cosmetics magnate’s experimentation with royal jelly produces a murderous mutation. Or John Waters’ 1968 short “Eat My Makeup,” no precis necessary. It is no accident that the possessor of the title condition in David Cronenberg’s 1977 “Rabid” was a woman, and it’s no coincidence that the character was played by then-adult-film star Marilyn Chambers. Consider too the high-end mordant farce “Death Becomes Her,” directed by Robert Zemeckis, in which eternal youth for Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn comes with hilariously grisly side effects. And of course there’s more.
Max Minghella, the actor turned director now making his second feature, waxes more Waters-y and Zemeckis-esque than he does Cronenbergian with “Shell,” a body horror in which Elisabeth Moss falls hook, line, and sinker for a beauty regimen invented and touted by a glowingly youthful Kate Hudson. Moss plays Samantha, or Sam, the one-time star of sitcom “Hannah Has a Heart,” about a girl with a talking heart. We meet the now middle-aged Sam as she endures a humiliating table read at an audition; she, and everyone else knows the part is gonna go to the beauteous YouTube star and, yes, “influencer” Chloe Benson, who’s played by Kaia Gerber, the 24-year-old daughter of Cindy Crawford and Randy Gerber, two well-known good-looking people. Chloe’s been to the hot new “Shell” clinic, run by Hudson’s Zoe Shannon. Why not give it a go? Hell, at the least it might help Sam with her psoriasis. And “…if it doesn’t work it…doesn’t work” one character pronounces somewhat ominously.
We viewers have a fair idea why. In the movie’s prologue, we see famed actress Jenna Janero (a near-unrecognizable Elizabeth Berkley) running around her house with gnarly spore all over her body; screaming, she slices off what looks like a giant dirty mushroom cap from her shin. Ick. But Sam is so sold on the idea that she ignores what might be trigger warnings for ordinary youth-seeming folk. Like, at the first group dinner at the clinic she’s eating something pink and flaky that looks like lox and Zoe tells her guests that it’s her own shed skin. Aiieee! But Sam doesn’t flinch. Soon she’s bopping around the clinic in a pink robe hooked up to an IV dispensing pink fluid and soundtrack is pumping out “Walking On Sunshine.” What ho!
Soon, the psoriasis is gone. Which is great, except there’s some gnarly stuff that looks like deep blue mold cropping up on her neck. It might be the same stuff Berkley’s character was scraping off, come to think of it. No matter, says the creepy Dr. Hubert (Arian Moayad) who just plucks the material off of her. It’s most difficult to shrug off the blue liquid Sam projectile vomits on her co-workers when she’s back on a soundstage.
As gnarly as things get, Minghella and screenwriter Jack Stanley maintain a keen feeling for farce. Note Zoe’s ridiculous assistant Cornelius: tall, lanky, with flat blond hair, dressed in black with orange gloves, he looks like he could have been a special guest on “Sprockets” back in the day. And the movie’s finale recalls another John Waters film, 1970’s “Multiple Maniacs.” You’ll never guess which part.
Anchoring it all is the ever-great Moss, who is also a co-producer on the picture. The actress is always heartbreakingly good playing character forced to endure a lot of humiliation, and in this scenario, she gets it coming and going. She illuminates the serious mess that this farce is about, underneath it all.
