Shell (2026)

The Substance, only cheap and cheerful.

It’s cheap movie Tuesday!!!

And I’m going to celebrate it by continuing to ignore Scream 7.

While the budget of the 7th Ghost Face movie is surprisingly low, low enough to qualify as Cheap Tuesday viewing, I just can’t get on board with another Scream sequel.

If you think I’m being an irrational hypocrite, particularly since I’m contributing a review to the Scarestack Society’s 13 Days of Jason next week, my response is a series of rhetorical questions.

“Does Scream 7 feature a character with telekinesis?” “Does it feature the villains from another slasher franchise?” “Is it set in space, or the distant future?” “Is David Cronenberg in it?”

The Scream franchise just isn’t using the creativity essential to justify a ‘7’ on the poster.

But there is no lack of creativity in Shell, the cheap movie I am going to discuss today.

Shell is about an aging actress who regains youthful beauty through experimental cosmetic procedures. Said procedures require no surgery or dietary changes and have extraordinary results except for one side effect. Turning into a giant lobster.

The Plot: Sam Lake (Elisabeth Moss) is an actress in her forties who hasn’t landed a role in a long time.

At a casting call, Sam is mortified to discover she’s auditioning alongside Chloe (Kaia Gerber) a 22-year old model Sam babysat ten years earlier.

Convinced she has become ‘too old’, Sam considers having work done. Her agent recommends the “Shell” clinic, which has an experimental rejuvenation procedure that supposedly works miracles.

The Shell clinic turns out to be full of characters and devices plucked straight from St Vincent’s “Los Ageless” video. There’s also an alarming number of very young people getting the procedure done, notably Chloe. It all creeps Sam out, but just as she’s heading for the exit, the charming Dr Hubert (Arian Moayed) coaxes her back by offering a shoulder to cry on.¹

So Sam has the procedure done and emerges looking twenty years younger.

Her acting career rebounds so spectacularly she’s invited to a dinner party to meet the CEO of Shell, Zoe Shannon (Kate Hudson) who is 68 years old but looks much, much younger.

Zoe takes an instant liking to Sam and invites her to be part of a celebrity inner circle and everything is coming up roses until Sam starts getting moles in strange places. The moles quickly grow into greenish-red scales and soon Sam is vomiting that black stuff movie characters vomit when they’re turning into zombies.

But Sam isn’t turning into a zombie, she’s turning into a shellfish!

Shell premiered two years ago at TIFF where it had the great misfortune to screen days after The Substance had already become one of festivals biggest hits.

The Substance went on to a successful wide release and several Oscar nominations while Shell languished in obscurity like a grocery store lobster with rubber bands around its claws.

Shell wouldn’t get a theatrical release until October 2025². Most people are only hearing about it now because it recently started streaming on Amazon Prime.

Will you like Shell? That depends.

While it does have zombie barf, crustacean moles and people getting snipped to ribbons by lobster claws, Shell never gets near the hard-gore of The Substance

Shell also has a lot more plot, characters and dialogue than The Substance and for many, that will be a bad thing.

Because something that made The Substance click with so many were the long dialogue-free scenes where Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley expressed their fear, rage, horror and desperation solely with facial expressions and body language.

Shell isn’t like that. There’s lots of talking. There’s comedic banter, dramatic banter, heated arguments about the definitions of beauty and happiness and “Moo-haw-haw” mad-scientist soliloquies.

The performances are good, Elisabeth Moss plays a deeply insecure actress very well and Kate Hudson is having a blast as a Cruella de Vil-style villainess.

Shell is a 1950s “cautionary tale” monster movie, updated to contemporary styles and standards, but still cheap. If that sounds good to you, you’ll love it.

The Substance may have more gravitas, but for many, that’s a bad thing. There can’t be any sequels or prequels to The Substance because that would land somewhere between blasphemous and tacky.

But there’s no reason Shell 2 couldn’t happen. A film about a slasher villain with lobster claws has lots of potential, more so than a seventh Scream movie, anyway.

The Tea: Hibiscus tea, the blood red tipple of villains since the dawn of civilization, plus it promotes skin elasticity and fights environmental stressors.

The Snack: Lobster would be way too obvious.³⁴ Instead, invoke the mystery meat Zoe serves during the infamous dinner party scene with some delicious smoke salmon. Smoked trout works too.

1. and some ice cream

2. Allegedly. I don’t remember seeing it playing anywhere. Do you?

3. also, too expensive

4. also, gross. Lobster tastes awful.