Remember those fetid middle school health videos about eating disorders? The concerned best friend, the bespectacled guidance counselor, the implied offscreen self-abuse. The gorging. The vomiting. The inevitable dramatic hospital visit. Excess Flesh isn’t quite that but Patrick Kennelly‘s wannabe horror feature is still very much the cinematic version of binging and purging. It crams a bunch of junk down your throat only to yuck it back on the screen as watery, indistinct gook. Kinda like the next day stomach movement of a truly ripping kegger. Kennelly’s narrative circle of hell exhumes outdated and/or overplayed models of violence towards women and the violence women inflict on themselves to ill-effect. Aided by a predictable and heavily cliched script from Kennelly and co-writer Sigrid Gilmer (starring bottom-feeding lines like “You’re not gonna get away with this, you know”), Excess Flesh is at once an obvious and oblivious body dysmorphia thriller that’s more than a little flabby. And by curtain time, it, like a half-starved model, has totally collapsed off the runway.

Bethany Orr plays Jill, a recent LA transplant who’s jobless, friendless and rocking a slight swoop of a double chin. In the circles of Hollywood pondscum that surrounded her, she’s very much “Ish don’t think so.” Her only connection to the outside world is her pretty but emotionally abusive BFF Jennifer. Jennifer, played by the ironically named Mary Loveless, is the breed of a chic white trash who makes a point of eating all the high calorie foods she wants to in front of the anorexic/bulimic Jill (the movie seems to not have a handle on the distinction between the two disorders) without second-guessing the distress such an action might cause. Kennelly makes a point of getting up close and personal with the Dorrito crumbs lining Jill’s mouth like Halloween lipstick just as he zooms in on microwaved burritos dunked in Fritos before being slammed into her snaggled piehole. If I had a dollar for every gross scene that’s way too close to an actress’ mouth, I would have roughly $25.

Jennifer makes a habit of saddling the guys she’s promised to her pitiable hermitess of a friend and regularly blowing off their arranged hangouts without a lick of regret. Even when a slaved over Duck L’Blueberry is on the line. Seriously, this girl is just the worst and to believe that anyone would befriend her for more than just her sweet cocaine hookup is beyond belief. Before you can say “Poptart Crumble!”, Jill can’t stomach another ounce of Jennifer’s fetid megalomania and chains her to a wall. She kicks and screams but no-one’s coming for her because it’s LA and no-one cares. A full blown psychological break that involves mountains of Easy Mac follows.

At least in chains, the aggressively unsatisfying Loveless is restricted in her movements and speeches, putting a muzzle on a painfully bad performance. As Jill, Orr isn’t nearly as lousy and even shows brief glimpses of promise. She nearly comes into her own in the second act, pounding out a manic performance that has high notes and lows. She is truly exposed as an actress (and usually covered in some degree of red velvet cake) to the point where one might convincingly go so far as to call the performance brave. I personally wouldn’t but I could understand the argument. As Excess Flesh moves into its final act though, everything – including Orr – spirals down the toilet like a bulimic’s stomach contents after a wine and cheese gala. To put it lightly, a flattering role, this is not.

Even for a low-budget horror-thriller, Excess Flesh showcases a remarkable amount of careless filmmaking, carelessness that almost borders on disdain. In this tripped out satire of fickle LA fashionistas, everything is a copy of a copy. The Skype-like video chats they use is “Gabber”, their Facebook is “Life Stock”. Doritos aren’t even Doritos, but still their backsides feature the Doritos logo. (They must have missed that. Oops.) Kennelly and Co. seem simply unable to cook up their Royale with Cheese so they copy, copy, copy.

As example, in the midst of Excess Flesh, events turn darkly surrealistic. But even those nightmarish moments of reality-breaking subterfuge get away from the crew and come across as cheap replications of superior material. Kennelly aims for the weird and unsettling nature of Tappy Tibbons’ “JUICE” (or “Join Us in Creating Excellent” *shudders*) but his juice tastes like pure ipecac. The refrigerator as a symbolic antagonist in particular summons the disquieting perfection of Requiem for a Dream but Orr is certainly no Burstyn and Kennelly no Aronofsky.

A body image nightmare that’s hard to watch for all the wrong reasons, Excess Flesh is a gluttonous mix of noxious characters, gross-out body horror and obvious narrative Indian burns. With all the sophistication of Easy Mac, Kennelly’s picture is painted in slobbish strokes, managing a surface level mockery of a serious issue with little to no intrigue.

For an improved, abridged version of similar material, you’re much better off watching the five minute French short “X is for XXL” from The ABCs of Death. For one the music is better – Jonathan Snipe‘s Excess score is about as ominous as the giant’s footsteps in Into the Woods; a sonic cacophony of dull clanks that each land with a thud – and the chief concept is somehow more restrained (in XXL, a woman saws off her own flesh to appear prettier, if just for one moment). Take from that what you will.