Now and then, a film comes along that turns Hollywood’s obsession with beauty into its own monster. Shell, directed by Max Minghella, attempts exactly that: a glossy look at the cost of staying youthful in an industry that treats age like a disease.
Elisabeth Moss leads this horror comedy as Samantha Lake, a fading actress desperate to reclaim her glow, her fame, and perhaps her soul.
At first, Samantha seems like many aging performers we’ve seen across film history: talented but discarded, watching younger stars run off with the attention she once commanded.
When she meets Zoe Shannon (Kate Hudson), a wellness mogul offering the ultimate anti-aging treatment through her company, also called Shell, transformation comes quickly. Overnight, Samantha becomes radiant again, drawing media praise and the interest of casting directors who had forgotten her name.
But from the very moment her skin begins to glow, something beneath it starts to rot.
Elisabeth Moss Brings Humanity to Synthetic Perfection
Few performers capture inner unraveling as convincingly as Elisabeth Moss. As Samantha, she plays fragility masked by endless poise.
Her face carries exhaustion hidden under camera-ready smiles, and her voice trembles even when she pretends confidence. Moss manages to balance self-awareness and delusion so finely that audiences both sympathize and recoil.
What makes her performance so magnetic is how it continuously shifts. In one moment, she’s vulnerable, practically begging the camera to love her again. In the next scene, she’s terrifying, her charm replaced by quiet menace.
The movie uses mirrors and screens obsessively, watching her as she watches herself, creating an eerie feedback loop between fame and self-destruction.
This duality echoes the film’s visual style. Minghella and his cinematographer give Los Angeles a shimmering, retro-futuristic glow. Every surface glints like a diamond, every corridor feels plastically perfect, suggesting the uncanny vibe of a city rebuilt by beauty clinics.
Yet behind this sheen, something impure lurks. Moss thrives in that space between adoration and disgust, confirming that few actors can blend horror and pathos as effectively.
Kate Hudson’s Dual Nature: Glamour and Menace
Kate Hudson steals scenes as Zoe Shannon, whose calm smile hides predatory intent. Her company, Shell, markets itself as the modern revolution of wellness, promising regeneration beyond science. Hudson’s performance glides between maternal warmth and frightening supremacy.
She’s the embodiment of every influencer who swears her products come from “self-care,” while silently counting the profit margins behind them.
Zoe’s charisma feels addictive, her control subtle but complete. When she speaks, even her pauses sound rehearsed. Watching Moss and Hudson together is like witnessing a power exchange in slow motion; Samantha starts as a client and ends as a possession.
Hudson’s approach plays into the broader theme of women betraying women under the pressure of survival in a beauty-driven world.
The film hints that Zoe might have been like Samantha once, seduced and devoured by the same system she now controls. That tragic loop embodies Shell’s core idea: the cycle of fear that industries feed to keep people buying youth.
A Satirical Mirror Held to Hollywood
Minghella’s direction brims with visual confidence. The production design oozes irony, pastel fitness centers, chrome therapy booths, and magazine offices where no one eats but everyone smiles. Los Angeles becomes a reflection maze, a candy-colored hell decorated like a skincare ad.
Shell (Credit: Dark Castle Entertainment)
The satire cuts deep in several sequences. One features Samantha in a live-streamed wellness ritual surrounded by adoring followers chanting slogans about “self-love,” even as something sinister slithers beneath her rejuvenated skin.
Another shows younger influencers whispering about her “return” as if reinvention were a sport. Each moment mocks the absurd blend of spirituality and capitalism that defines modern self-improvement culture.
Where Shell succeeds is in highlighting how ordinary vanity turns monstrous through relentless repetition. It’s not the body horror that horrifies most; it’s the idea that losing youth means losing worth. The film uses its glowing sci-fi aesthetic to emphasize the emptiness hiding inside every beauty regimen promising renewal.
When Satire Doesn’t Cut Deep Enough
The biggest issue with Shell lies in its hesitation. The film begins with bold imagery, a violent opening sequence featuring Elizabeth Berkley that sets expectations for gruesome terror. Yet, somewhere between its first and final acts, the film grows timid. Instead of committing to true horror, it drifts toward comedy.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with this tonal blend; horror-comedy can expose societal truths brilliantly. The problem comes when the movie tries to shift moods too abruptly.
After hours of build-up, the eventual descent into body horror feels brief and softened, as though the camera turns away right when things get interesting. It’s as if Minghella was crafting an R-rated satire but pulled back for wider mainstream appeal.
That hesitation doesn’t ruin the movie, but it keeps it from greatness. Viewers sense the potential for something darker and more profound, a chance to explore physical mutation as a metaphor for fame’s decay. Instead, the narrative plays it safe, preferring irony over intensity.
Strong Cast, Strong Concept, Uneven Execution
Despite its narrative limitations, Shell boasts an irresistible rhythm, helped by its impressive supporting cast. Kaia Gerber delivers a sharp secondary role as an influencer who idolizes Zoe’s empire without realizing she’s next in line for exploitation.
Arian Moayed and Amy Landecker add brief but memorable moments as cynical industry players who treat bodily maintenance like a business pitch.
The cameos by Este Haim and Ziwe inject bursts of satirical wit. Haim’s portrayal of Samantha’s bumbling assistant adds humor amid tension, while Ziwe’s ruthless media executive turns corporate coldness into pure art. Together, these side characters capture Hollywood’s hollow chatter perfectly: everyone is selling something, even their fear.
Tonally, some scenes sparkle with satirical brilliance, while others meander in search of direction. The pacing slackens mid-film as the story tries to choose between being a horror satire or a wellness-world parody. Still, when Shell hits the right notes, it’s a magnetic, surreal mix of glamour, irony, and existential dread.
Beauty, Decay, and the Price of Perfection
By the time Shell reaches its finale, its central mystery, what Zoe’s company truly does to its clients, emerges in full grotesque color.
The climactic transformation delivers a body horror spectacle but also emotional emptiness. It’s stylish, chaotic, and appropriately shocking, yet it feels fleeting. Still, the final image of a once-beautiful star turned literal product gives the movie its lasting sting.
Moss’s final scenes encapsulate what Shell tries to say about modern womanhood and celebrity: perfection is a prison dressed as freedom. Every smile hides desperation, every flawless surface conceals suffering. Through her tragedy, the film gestures toward something powerful, even if it never fully arrives.
Max Minghella deserves credit for ambition. Few directors attempt horror about vanity without resorting to cheap caricature, and his visual storytelling brims with intent. But Shell ultimately stops where it should soar, too cautious to embrace the horror it teases.
Shell is gorgeous, smartly performed, and biting in its critique of youth-obsessed culture. Yet, much like the industry it portrays, it promises transformation without delivering full depth. The film’s beauty and its message about self-destruction shimmer on the surface but rarely penetrate emotionally.
Elisabeth Moss and Kate Hudson make it worth watching, two actresses portraying a desperate transformation within a system designed to consume them. Their performances give Shell its pulse, even when the plot falters.
A satire sharper than most Hollywood thrillers, Shell succeeds as a mirror to vanity culture, even if its reflection feels just slightly too polished.
At just twenty-one, Australian filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay has achieved what most artists spend decades attempting: an instantly recognizable voice.
Her work merges DIY intensity with radical sincerity, balancing the intimacy of friendship films and the assertiveness of horror allegory. She creates stories not about transness as spectacle but transness as lived, felt, and fierce reality.
Her newest feature, The Serpent’s Skin, continues her thrilling, rebellious streak, sitting comfortably within her filmography yet glowing more brightly. Like her earlier works, it unfolds through genre playfulness, part horror, part coming-of-age odyssey, but its ambitions feel larger.
Here, Mackay fuses the supernatural with the political and the erotic with the rageful, crafting a defiant piece of queer cinema that burns with life and danger.
Edited by Vera Drew, the trans filmmaker behind The People’s Joker, The Serpent’s Skin becomes a creative bridge between generations of trans artists. It feels handmade yet assured, pulpy yet meaningful, a love letter to those who find safety in community and terror in rejection.
Mackay positions her film’s title as both metaphor and identity: the serpent’s skin as the act of shedding, transforming, and reclaiming one’s body.
The Story: Power, Vulnerability, and Trans Rebellion
The luminous Alexandra McVicker stars as Anna, a young trans woman forced to leave home after her parents deem her “wayward.” Their voices, faint and sharp behind closed doors, echo throughout her journey, reminders of the violence of erasure.
Seeking refuge, Anna arrives in Adelaide to live with her sister Dakota (Charlotte Chimes), who tries to guide her toward a quieter life but cannot quiet the chaos trailing close behind.
Anna soon meets Danny (Jordan Dulieu), a cisgender man whose gothic allure, painted nails, black curls, and easy charm initially disarm her.
Their connection unfolds quickly, driven by attraction as much as longing for recognition. His casual acceptance, “that’s fine,” he says of her gender, rings hollow, an early sign that not all allies carry understanding.
Finding work at a record shop provides Anna with brief solace, but danger intrudes in the form of a petty thief. When he attacks, something inside her ignites. A flash of neon pink floods the frame as the aggressor collapses, bleeding from the eyes and mouth.
This eruption of power becomes the film’s hinge, shifting The Serpent’s Skin from grounded drama into supernatural queer myth.
Enter Gen (Avalon Fast), a mysterious stranger and part-time prophet who recognizes what Anna has done and what she can become. Gen explains that Anna has “popped” an innate defense mechanism triggered by mortal threat. The act is exhilarating yet perilous, representing both empowerment and potential destruction.
In Gen’s care, Anna learns to channel her force with intention. What begins as mentorship grows sensual, philosophical, and spiritual relationship at once tender and revolutionary. Together, they combat external threats and internalized fear, redefining survival as shared rebellion.
Love, Power, and Horror Through a Trans Lens
The Serpent’s Skin uses horror not as spectacle but as expression. Mackay reframes violence against queer people into a metaphoric transformation. When Anna sets a piece of transphobic propaganda aflame using her new powers, it feels like catharsis made literal.
The film’s genre trappings, witchcraft, vampirism, and satanic cults reimagine old misogynistic fears about women’s bodies and queer magic as sources of empowerment rather than danger.
The Serpent’s Skin (Credit: Dark Star Pictures)
What makes Mackay’s horror distinct is her blend of warmth and fury. The blood and neon don’t exist for shock; they symbolize brightness forcing its way through pain. Anna’s journey isn’t framed as a fight for acceptance from society but as an affirmation of existence and the right to be seen, desired, and free.
The love scenes, which center on trans intimacy, are particularly striking. They neither conceal nor fetishize. Instead, they present queer desire as sacred and ordinary, bodies meeting not to prove something but to feel.
When Anna and Gen hold each other, their closeness flickers between affection and ritual, both sensual and transformative.
There’s rage underneath the tenderness. “We’re still in hiding,” Gen says one night. “As if the witch hunts are still onto us.” Anna’s reply is soft but unflinching: “They are. They’ve just changed their names.”
It’s one of several moments that ground the fantasy in contemporary trans experience, threading political consciousness through psychedelia and poetry.
A Visual Spell of Neon and Shadow
Stylistically, The Serpent’s Skin is electric. Mackay and her cinematographer coat every frame in saturated tones of amethyst, turquoise, and shock pink, turning Adelaide’s drab corners into dreamscapes.
The low-budget aesthetic becomes a strength; grain, flicker, and handheld framing lend the movie a tactility absent in studio horror.
The metaphysical glow running through the visuals mirrors the characters themselves, unpolished yet luminous, precarious yet radiant. Rather than aiming for realism, Mackay opts for texture, evoking 80s VHS grit crossed with mystical surrealism.
The effect feels both nostalgic and defiantly future-facing, a reclamation of DIY queer cinema where imperfection equals authenticity.
Key moments play out like paintings come to life: a broken window shimmering with moonlight as Anna confronts her nightmare; the faint hum of a record player while Gen speaks about transcendence; the ouroboros tattoo crawling across Danny’s neck as he succumbs to violence and obsession.
Each image reinforces Mackay’s instinct for tying the personal to the mythical.
Even when the story teeters toward chaos, the direction never loses coherence. Mackay embraces maximalism without apology, wielding color and sound like emotional weapons. The dreamy synth score pulses like a heartbeat, guiding the viewer through love, fear, and liberation.
Alice Maio Mackay: A Voice for Trans Horror’s Future
The impact of The Serpent’s Skin stretches beyond its story. Mackay’s filmography, though still young, feels like a manifesto for trans authorship. She echoes Gregg Araki’s early independence and energy but moves past queer cinema’s historical defensiveness. Her queerness isn’t explained; it simply exists, audacious and self-assured.
By aligning trans identity with mysticism, Mackay offers more than metaphorical empowerment; she constructs a new mythology. The idea that queer individuals hold hidden, magical energy serves both as fantasy and truth. It reclaims the very superstition once used against women and trans people, transforming persecution into prophecy.
Within underground cinema, Mackay’s rise signals a larger shift. Trans creators are telling their own stories not as subjects studied from a distance but as vivid protagonists wielding agency, humor, and rage. The Serpent’s Skin may wear its lo-fi charm proudly, but its emotional and political resonance feels world-class.
Alice Maio Mackay’s work arrives at a critical cultural moment, reminding audiences that horror, so long used to demonize difference, can also celebrate it. As Anna learns to harness her power without losing her tenderness, Mackay demonstrates what real creative magic looks like: fearless imagination.
The Serpent’s Skin hypnotizes through its glowing turmoil, a film both fierce and fragile, haunting yet jubilant. It stands not just as queer horror but as queer liberation, expressed through artistry that feels instinctively alive.
Mackay understands that to tell trans stories through horror is to reveal both the beauty and brutality of transformation. Her cinema pulses with life even in darkness, a reminder that survival itself can be an act of creation.
At twenty-one, Alice Maio Mackay isn’t just directing films; she’s rewriting what horror can mean when it belongs to those once hunted by it.
