Shell’s Max Minghella on How Starring in Saw Spin-off Influenced New Horror Movie | Interview
ComingSoon Senior Editor Brandon Schreur spoke to Shell director Max Minghella about the new body horror movie starring Elisabeth Moss. Minghella discussed how being in a Saw movie helped shape Shell, his relationship with the body horror genre, and more.
“Desperate to reclaim her career, once-beloved actress Samantha Lake (Elisabeth Moss) is drawn into the glamorous world of wellness mogul Zoe Shannon (Kate Hudson) — only to uncover a monstrous truth beneath its flawless surface,” the official synopsis reads.
Shell will be released in select theaters and on digital platforms on October 3, 2025, from Republic Pictures.
Brandon Schreur: Max, this is obviously the second movie you’ve directed after Teen Spirit. I’d love to know a little bit about how you got involved with this project and why, specifically, you wanted this to be the next movie you direct. What was it about the script from Jack Stanley that stood out to you the most the first time you read it?
Max Minghella: Great question. I think a lot of directors are like this — what you make is a little bit of a response to whatever you’ve just done. I was in post-production on Teen Spirit, I was reading stuff that was being sent to me, and this came across my desk. Honestly, the pitch didn’t sound massively appealing to me. I’m not a huge body horror person. It sounded quite abstract, and I’m quite literal. So, I remember hearing the pitch and being like, ‘This doesn’t sound like my thing at all.’
I started reading it and, almost instantly, fell in love with it. It reminded me a huge amount of Death Becomes Her, which is a film that I love massively. But it had sort of a unique interpretation of that fable, and it had a perversion to it. It reminded me a lot of Paul Verhoeven, who is maybe one of my favorite filmmakers. So there was a combination of things that I really love but never really contemplated in my subconscious. I got really excited about marrying these sort of two things.
I’d say that in the six, seven years or whatever that it took to get this movie made, that was constantly what I was looking to do. Bring the things I love about Death Becomes Her and the things I love about Verhoeven, and find some kind of marriage between those two things.
Sure, totally. That’s such a good comparison, too. I watched Death Becomes Her last Halloween, and I’ve become obsessed with that movie. I’ve seen it like five times since then. I can totally pick up on the vibe that you put in here. I think that’s a great comparison.
Yeah, I don’t normally gravitate towards such high camp, but when it’s done well, it’s really good fun.
Totally. That leads into what I wanted to ask you next, too, because there are a lot of different things I love about Shell, but one of them is that body horror aspect. I mean, you have a lot of fun with it, especially in the third act when things do ramp up and start getting crazy. I’ve been kind of curious about what your relationship is with this genre — I mean, you said you weren’t super into it, but was there a point a certain movie you watched in the body horror genre that clicked with you that helped make Shell?
Totally. I act as well, and sometimes what I’m working on as an actor gets absorbed into what I’m writing. I was actually working on a Saw movie while I was doing the rewrite on Shell.
Spiral, yeah.
I think quite a lot of that sort of seeped into the movie. I was really enjoying, and surprised by how much I was enjoying, working with prosthetics and pushing the bloody on set. It becomes quite addictive. When we were testing Spiral, it was really interesting to watch that movie with an audience. I learned quite a lot from sitting with an audience and watching that film. I think a lot of that got absorbed into this movie.
I can totally see it. Another thing I found really interesting about this movie is just what it’s saying about women in Hollywood and the film industry, how someone can reach a certain age and then suddenly the world changes for them. You become older, and suddenly the world looks at you differently. I thought that was really interesting. Can you tell me a little bit about those themes, how they resonated with you, and what made you want to explore them in this movie?
Yeah, I mean, I just turned 40 a week ago. When I first read the script, it made me think just a lot about my age in a way that I hadn’t really thought about before. I actually found it incredibly relatable, even though I don’t share the gender of the protagonist. And Jack’s original script actually had a very poignant ending. A very nuanced, poignant ending that probably didn’t quite fit in with where we took the rest of the movie. But it was also something that really affected me.
I worked really closely with Jamie Bell, who is my sort of chief collaborator in life. We talked a lot about the script, the themes, and what resonated with us. That was a huge part of it. I think we were surprised by how much that theme meant to us. I’ve also been very conscious, as someone who has worked in this business for a while, of how easily dismissed sometimes careers can be in very scary ways. How replaceable people can become. The business is quite ruthless, and I have tremendous empathy for people. I don’t think that how good you are, a lot of the time, is factored in.
No, that makes total sense. I’d love to ask about the futuristic aspect of the movie, too, because that was another cool component. It’s set in the future — but, like, it’s not so overbearing where it becomes a sci-fi movie. It’s just kind of something there, and the characters interact with the futuristic gadgets and all that. What did you feel like that added to the movie, setting it more in the future vs. the present day or the past?
I think that was a sort of eccentricity that probably wasn’t necessary, but I kept hanging on to it. As our budget kept getting whittled down and days were taken away from us, I kept clinging to this idea that we’d maintain some kind of retro futurism to the film. It’s really — when I first read the script — that’s how I saw the world, even though I don’t think that’s how it was articulated. It’s just how I imagined it. I thought a lot about Demolition Man. I thought a lot about movies like Sleeper, that Woody Allen movie Sleeper. It’s sort of what we thought the future would look like 30 years ago, 40 years ago.
There’s something — there’s a wit in what we get right and what we get wrong. I just found it kind of humorous, and I felt it was a sensibility that suited this movie. I’m glad that it came through. I’ve actually been surprised by how much people have been able to identify and articulate that element.
Thanks to Max Minghella for taking the time to talk about Shell.
Source: Comingsoon.net