Executscan Expected more

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

magnuslhad Scotland is a beautiful country, a staggeringly dramatic landscape that easily lends itself to cinema. Unfortunately, a film requires more than scenery, a point that is lost on the makers of Shell. A young woman lives an isolated life in a stark, barren setting, alone with her taciturn father. The male customers who visit her petrol station desire her. Women are suspicious of her. Shell seems over-attached to her father. What it all means and adds up to is anyone's guess. Films which throw up more questions than answers can be rewarding - such as Under the Skin, which makes better thematic use of a similar landscape. However, there has to be a glimpse of narrative coherence, a hint that more rewards are waiting if we make the effort to see beyond the surface. Sadly, Shell's waters run shallow in the extreme. Chloe Pirrie creates an atmosphere as brooding Shell, but the character does not grow or change. Joseph Mawle as the father evokes no familial bond. Rather than a father battling mental demons, I saw a bewildered actor. And Michael Smiley, so sinister and captivating in Kill List, is badly served by a script that eschews any attempt at character development. This film fails on multiple levels.

soraya_raza I had not heard of this film before but watched it last night and found that although it was on late, I could not take my eyes off the screen. The film is slow moving, but the acting draws you in - it is not an action thriller,so don't expect much dialogue or excitement. The characters move around each other with ease and there is a pathos and understanding between the father and daughter where you root for them to find some happiness in their dreary, bleak lives, even if it is with each other. Taboo subject, touched on with delicacy and great acting. It is almost like a French film where the words are few, the acting looks easy as if they are not acting, but the result is mesmerising and very watchable for the audience. You do feel for the couple and for their circumstances, but looking around the countryside, you can see that it reflects their empty lives.

Sindre Kaspersen Scottish screenwriter and director Scott Graham's feature film debut which he wrote, premiered in the New Directors section at the 60th San Sebastián International Film Festival in 2012, was shot on location in Scotland and is a UK production which was produced by producers David Smith and Margaret Matheson. It tells the story about a 17-year-old woman named Shell who lives with her father named Pete at a gas station in the Scottish countryside which he made years ago. Shell spends most of her days waiting for new customers and most of the time meets people who are just passing by. She has become friendly with a middle-aged man named Hugh who usually makes a stop at their place when he is on his way to see his children who lives with their mother and is sometimes visited by a man close to her age named Adam who works at a sawmill nearby and who seeks her company, but Shell's only constant is her father whom she has grown as attached to as any daughter could to her father.Distinctly and acutely directed by Scottish filmmaker Scott Graham, this quietly paced fictional tale which is narrated mostly from the main character's point of view, draws a silently reflective and consistently moving portrayal of a strangely though understandably affectionate relationship between a man whom is suffering both from illness and personal experiences and his daughter whose only communication with the outside world, which is an enigma to her, is through brief encounters with various passers-by. While notable for its naturalistic and prominent milieu depictions, evocative and masterful cinematography by cinematographer Yoliswa Gärtig, fine production design by production designer James Lapsley and use of sound and music, this narrative-driven story about blood ties and an increasingly isolating dependency that has kept two people inseparable, depicts two interrelated studies of character regarding two relatives who are becoming painfully aware of how chained they are to each other and how stuck they have become.This refined, situational and authentic coming-of-age drama which is set mostly at a remote roadside petrol station in the Scottish highlands during an autumn and where a single parent and his only child whom is in the transition between adolescence and adulthood is being internally changed and differently affected by the majestic landscape which surrounds and contrasts them and is a character in itself, is impelled and reinforced by its fleeting narrative structure, substantial character development, subtle continuity, graceful melancholy and psychological depth, poignant conversations, discreet humour, humane characters and the perceptive acting performances by Scottish actress Chloe Pirrie, English actor Joseph Mawle, Irish actor Michael Smiley, Scottish actress Kate Dickie and Scottish actor Iain De Caestecker. A mythical, cinematographic and mysteriously atmospheric character piece about the human condition and a timeless narrative feature which is one of the finest Scottish films in recent years.

bob_bear Artsy-fartsy character study of creepy father and daughter combo stranded in the middle of nowhere. As the minutes of your life tick away never to return the only comfort to be had is the knowledge that at least your life is not as godawful as theirs.One-note throughout, it plods, grimly towards it's dreary conclusion. Whoever thought this was worth funding clearly has more money than sense.The acting is suitably stilted to the point of somnambulent. The dialog is largely monosyllabic. All in all, it is truly the movie equivalent of watching paint dry. Not only was it never worth a trip to the cinema it isn't even worth a free download. Don't waste your electricity.