HORROR; 1hr 40min
STARRING: Elisabeth Moss, Kate Hudson
Merry hell: Moss
Samantha Lake (Moss) is a 40-plus, out-of-work actress with confidence issues, psoriasis and a cat. Zoe Shannon (Hudson) is the striking, self-satisfied owner of The Shell Clinic, whose motto is Live Better Live Longer but might as well be Look Better Live Better, surfaces being the name of their self-enhancement game. Zoe is 68 years old and looks 20 years younger. Actually, make that 30 years. She and Samantha would seem to have nothing in common, yet they forge an alliance when Samantha nerves herself to commit to a Shell Clinic do-over. What does she have to lose, after all, but her skin condition and her sad single status? And if “[halting] the ageing process” and “[facilitating] cellular repair” are two selling points of that sweet deal, who wouldn’t be signing on the bottom line of a daunting non-disclosure doc?
One Shell full body scan later, a pristine Sam is glowing. Next up, after a dinner party chez Zoe, where the hostess’s shed skin is tastefully served, eww, Sam is on her rejuvenated way — to a movie gig, an updated apartment and the hot sex she might otherwise never have had. And if all that sounds too starry to be true, you’d better believe it is. Sam’s decline starts out small with a mole or two. But as body-horror fans are gleefully aware (hello there, The Substance !), small is step one in a slalom to damnation.
This cockamamie free-fall from Teen Spirit director Max Minghella may never lay claim to artistic greatness, but its compulsive watchability is rooted in something equally enthralling. The yearning for youth is as primal as time itself, and in a culture where, as Zoe pithily puts it, “If you let nature take its course, you’re dismissed as old and irrelevant,” Sam’s craving for younger as better is shared by anyone who has stared in dismay down the sinkhole of the ageing process. Plus, when did Ms Moss ever not rock a scene? From the hellhole of The Handmaid’s Tale to the gonzo horror of transformation gone wrong, her relatability is an anchor in every dystopic storm.
