By Keri O’Shea
Most horror fans who have delved beyond the physical jerk-invoking shitfests being screened every Halloween will probably have an idea who Debbie Rochon is; add in a soft spot for low budget indie cinema, and chances are you’ll have seen more than a few offerings from her very extensive CV, especially if you’ve ever sat through a Troma movie or two. As of yet, however, despite many years in the business, she hasn’t been on the other side of the camera. Model Hunger (2016) is Rochon’s directorial debut, then – and it’s not more than a few frames before you can safely say that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree…
In that rather Troma-esque, overblown but twee style, all over-pronounced lines and omnipresent musical score, we start off with a troupe (correct plural?) of cheerleaders at practice, working hard to conceal the fact that they’re all actually and as-standard in their twenties. At the end of their session, their head honcho sends them out to ‘raise more money than last year’ for their charity of choice. The neighbourhood they head to is not much cop: the first guy to open his door seems to be hard of hearing, ha ha, but then they try a door down the street and meet Ginny (Lynn Lowry).
At first Ginny seems sweet, if the rather unlikely ‘little old lady’ that she’s apparently meant to present: t’isn’t long, though, before we can hear her inner thoughts (a staple of this film) and they are none too complimentary to the young ladies sat in her lounge now laughing at her ‘favourite show’, one of the film’s most baffling inclusions and something which features throughout – a shopping channel show where scream queen Suzi Lorraine, wearing a fat suit, rails against the indignities heaped upon ‘real women’ and tries to sell plus size clothes via a glamorous model, or rather an obese man in drag – an obese man who continually eats, as does Suzi, obviously. Hmm. Anyway, come some internal monologue about the shallowness of youth and beauty, it’s then time for the girls to be drugged, kidnapped and very soon afterwards hacked up for chow. As all of this happens in the first few minutes, I think I’m safe on the spoilers front: the film very much shows its trump hand early, albeit it then making us wait for anything much else in terms of plot.
However, another familiar indie horror face is moving into the area – step up one Deb (Tiffany Shepis) and her husband Sal (Carmine Capobianco), who have just taken a house on the street. Debbie is depressed and, after a fashion, recuperating – mainly by calling her husband an asshole repeatedly, and having traumatic dreams of family, though beyond this, very little context for Deb’s character is offered – a waste, and the reason for something of an imbalance between the two female leads.
Where Shepis is kept on the down-low, with very little to do for large parts of the film, there’s an attempt made to position Lowry as many things all at once. Whilst Ginny as a character definitely has some entertainingly deranged, sneering moments, though some of this may be due to recalling her understated performance in arguably one of her best-known roles in Shivers, overall her role in Model Hunger is confused, alternating between dear old lady (both being called this by others, and calling herself such), then hey presto! She’s a bat-wielding maniac, and then also an increasingly irate mouthpiece for the indignities of the beauty industry. Oh, and she has a sexy lingerie scene too. These latter elements, I think, would all have been easier to believe if we weren’t first asked to see Ginnie as an infirm old dear, which, despite being nearly seventy in real life, she doesn’t appear to be, whatever chintz she’s given to wear here.
As for the press release’s feted showdown between Shepis and Lowry, this largely consists of Deb growing ever more suspicious of her prim-and-proper neighbour, especially when people seem to be forever going into Ginny’s house but never resurfacing, before later – much, much later – deciding to investigate. If the film has a central core, it seems to be Ginny, trying to come to terms with her former life as a model and the fact that her body shape was just slightly too curvy for the fashion of the day. This translates to a hatred of other women, it seems, though the cannibal element is never explained. Presumably we’re entitled, even invited to join the dots and see it as a literal representation of how adverse beauty norms chew us women up and spit us out, or something – and certainly, other reviewers have praised the film for its commentary on the ‘male gaze’ and ‘unrealistic body expectations’, maybe because they don’t feel confident to contradict it. Well, all I’ll say is that this is an effective a critique of Western beauty standards as Redneck Zombies is of the North/South divide in modern America. There’s a lot here I can’t buy, basically, something which comes from the risk indie horror takes when it pays lip service to a serious theme like body image.
Your best bet, should you find yourself watching Model Hunger, is to leave any expectations of social commentary at the door. To focus on the positives: the SFX are practical, with plenty here for those who come out in a cold sweat at the thought of CGI; there’s some splatter, some flesh-eating, some recognisable indie movie faces, and that rough-and-ready feel which will be just as recognisable and familiar to plenty of viewers. Beyond that, however, like the body type being rejected over and over in the movie, this is all just a bit thin.
Model Hunger is available from July 12th 2016.