Elizabeth Moss and Kate Hudson in black horror comedy

shell is a movie designed to be a guilty pleasure. It wants to be a movie people see on cable TV in the middle of the day or late at night. Many movies became popular this way, especially before the age of streaming: scrappy little movies with campy humor and talented actors playing around in ways that were less risky for their careers. and stretch their performance muscles. At its worst, the film becomes a curiosity—not good, but its bad enough to be fascinating. Best case scenario is to be one of those hidden gems that gets a second life on home video.

That’s clearly what director Max Minghella was aiming for shellA campy horror black comedy about the unfair beauty standards in modern society. Six years after making his directorial debut, teen spiritMinghella returns to the Toronto International Film Festival with another film about someone who desperately wants to be a big star. “Shell” tells the story of Samantha Lake (Elizabeth Moss), a television actress trying to break into film roles. But in Hollywood, she was at the bottom of the food chain, and her team decided it was time for her to make a change.

Enter Zoe Shannon (Kate Hudson) and her beauty empire—her Shell Company creates a new type of treatment designed to improve the body’s overall health and halt the aging process. Samantha is hesitant at first, but she is soon convinced by the handsome Dr. Hubert (played by Ariane Moyed). At the clinic, she meets Chloe Benson (Kaia Gerber), a young woman she once cared for, and the two reconnect. Still, Samantha wondered why someone so young even needed therapy. Chloe is brand new to acting, but she’s already competing with Samantha for roles. Why does she need to make changes now, so early in her career?

Shortly after they all entered therapy, Chloe disappeared, but Samantha was too busy with her newfound popularity to notice at first. Therapy changed everything for Samantha; she became more confident in front of and off the camera, bought a new place, and hired her best friend Lydia (Esther Helm) as her assistant to manage her newfound success. She even becomes close with Zoe, who encourages her to embrace her feminine power to get what she wants.

Samantha blossomed, landed her dream movie role and felt sexy for the first time in her life. But when the treatments start giving Samantha unforeseen side effects, the facade of Zoe and her beauty empire begins to crack. Soon, Samantha realizes that what happened to Chloe is also happening to her.

Somehow at 100 minutes, shell Still feels too short. Writer Jack Stanley’s script moves quickly from scene to scene, leaving little room to pause and consider where the story is going. Moss does her best as Samantha, but the character is thinly written and doesn’t have much to hold over. Samantha’s transformation was largely an internal one, she gained confidence and all her problems seemed to disappear.

As the horror elements slowly seep in, the focus of the story becomes clearer. Hudson is fun as Zoe, but the movie never quite develops her into a full-on camp villain. Everything she does feels a little too gentle, too neat, when she should be getting her hands dirty. shell It’s at its best when it goes for the weird, but the film’s look is a little too clean to fully sell it. The visceral nature of classic camp horror is what makes it so memorable. There is a courage in the movie that is not afraid of being ugly.

final, shellA look at the beauty industry only scratches the surface. When a movie doesn’t have much to say, it all depends on its tone and the strength of its performances. Despite the film’s flaws, the cast – including playful performances from Peter McNicholl, Amy Landecker, and Randall Park – are dramatic and seem to really be enjoying the story. shell It won’t change any modern discourse about beauty standards, and it probably won’t become the cult classic it clearly wants to be, but it’s good enough as an oddity.