Haunted by Hunger and Humanity
In a cinematic landscape cluttered with ghostly jump scares and calorie-free characters, The Wasting stands out as something rare: a supernatural story with actual substance. Written and directed by Carolyn Saunders, this Canadian-British psychological drama manages to make the horror of an eating disorder and the terror of a haunting feel like two sides of the same withering coin.
It’s a film about control, fear, and that special kind of teenage doom where your father’s disappointed sigh feels scarier than the undead. Yet despite the grim premise — anorexia, isolation, and one seriously creepy old woman — The Wastingis surprisingly alive. It’s eerie, moving, and yes, wickedly funny in the bleak, “this-is-my-life-now” way only British-Canadian films can pull off.
If The Babadook had a younger, sadder cousin who spent too much time staring into the bathroom mirror counting ribs, this would be her story.
Plot: When Ghosts Start Counting Calories
Lauren McQueen plays Sophie, a teenage girl navigating the hormonal hellscape of adolescence, armed with nothing but a half-eaten apple and a mountain of unresolved trauma. Her father (Gray O’Brien) is a strict, emotionally constipated man whose love language is authoritarian disappointment. Enter Kai (Brendan Flynn), the sweet, slightly scruffy boyfriend whose mere existence pushes Sophie’s home life further off-balance.
Soon Sophie’s anxiety about her father, her boyfriend, and her reflection metastasizes into something more sinister. She stops eating, starts seeing ghosts, and generally begins to look like a Victorian child who’s been locked in an attic for too long.
But this isn’t your standard “girl slowly loses her mind” plot. Sophie’s visions — particularly of a terrifying old woman who could double as a corpse auditioning for The Crown — are visceral, relentless, and possibly real. Each night, as her body weakens and her mind frays, the specter grows stronger, whispering in the darkness and making hunger feel like a haunting.
Is the ghost a manifestation of her deteriorating psyche, or is it something ancient and malicious feeding on her frailty? The film doesn’t give easy answers — because in The Wasting, every horror is metaphorical, and every metaphor has sharp teeth.
The Monster Under the Bed Is You
What makes The Wasting so unnervingly good is its refusal to separate the supernatural from the psychological. The ghost isn’t just a thing that goes bump in the night — it’s the shape of Sophie’s self-destruction.
Carolyn Saunders walks a razor-thin line between horror and heartbreak. Every scene of the old woman creeping out of shadows doubles as a portrait of self-hate and physical decay. It’s The Sixth Sense meets Requiem for a Dream — if Requiem had fewer needles and more phantoms lurking by the fridge.
The film’s title is both literal and symbolic. Sophie is wasting away physically and emotionally, consumed by expectations, shame, and a body she can’t seem to live in. The ghost just happens to be the one creature who notices — a cruel companion that feeds on what little is left of her.
And somehow, amid all the dread, there’s a strange dark humor to it. Sophie’s terror is so absurdly lonely that you can’t help but laugh when she starts yelling at her father mid-ghost sighting, like, “Excuse me, Dad, I’m literally being haunted and grounded at the same time!”
Lauren McQueen: Skin, Bones, and Soul
Lauren McQueen gives a hauntingly fragile performance as Sophie — equal parts vulnerability and feral anger. You can practically feel her bones grinding against the weight of expectation. It’s not just an act of emotional transparency; it’s a full-body exorcism.
When she stares at herself in the mirror, it’s like watching someone wrestle her own reflection for control of her soul. Every twitch, every shadow under her eyes feels earned. McQueen doesn’t play Sophie like a victim — she plays her like a soldier on the losing end of a war with her own biology.
And when the ghost finally crawls out of the darkness, McQueen doesn’t scream — she collapses, as though she’s already been living with this horror long before it ever materialized. It’s powerful, it’s painful, and it’s the kind of performance that makes you want to call your teenage self and say, “You’re doing fine, please eat something.”
Parental Control Issues (Now Featuring Ghosts!)
Gray O’Brien as Sophie’s father is a masterclass in repressed rage. He’s the kind of man who could ruin your birthday just by existing in the room. His parenting style can best be described as “benevolent dictatorship,” which works fine until your daughter starts talking to invisible dead women in her bedroom.
The film’s real tension doesn’t come from jump scares or spectral violence — it comes from that suffocating father-daughter dynamic. Sophie can’t tell him she’s dying inside, and he can’t see past his own fear of losing control. So the haunting becomes a twisted form of communication — every night the ghost visits, Sophie’s silence screams louder.
And somewhere, in that grim domestic hellscape, you start to realize that maybe the ghost isn’t even the worst parent in this movie.
Ghost Story as Eating Disorder Metaphor: 10/10, No Notes
The film’s genius lies in how elegantly it weaves its themes together. The haunting feels like an externalization of anorexia — the way it creeps in, isolates you, convinces you it’s your friend while it slowly kills you.
The ghost isn’t punishing Sophie; it’s feeding on her — much like the disorder itself. And every time someone dismisses her visions as delusion or teenage melodrama, the film skewers our cultural tendency to minimize women’s pain.
It’s horror as allegory, but never preachy. You feel the message without being lectured. And in between the tears and the terror, there’s a wicked little sense of irony: a story about starvation that leaves you emotionally stuffed.
Direction and Atmosphere: Ghostly Restraint
Saunders’ direction is refreshingly restrained — no cheap shocks, no CGI ghosts popping out like unwanted Zoom calls. The cinematography leans into quiet dread: long, still shots of empty bedrooms, whispers of movement in the corner of the frame, and lighting so pale it feels like the film itself might faint.
Even the soundtrack hums with tension — mournful piano notes and echoing breaths that make you question whether the noise is coming from the film or from inside your own head.
It’s not horror by volume; it’s horror by erosion. Every scene eats a little more of Sophie’s light until you can barely tell if she’s human or ghost already.
Dark Humor: Laughing on an Empty Stomach
For all its weighty themes, The Wasting never loses its sense of morbid wit. There’s something inherently absurd about being haunted by a ghost and by your caloric intake. At one point, you half expect the old woman to whisper, “You look thin, dear — have some ectoplasm.”
The humor doesn’t undercut the horror; it enriches it. Because that’s how real trauma works — it’s terrifying, yes, but sometimes all you can do is laugh between screams.
Final Verdict: Hungry for More
The Wasting is the kind of film that sneaks up on you — quiet, deliberate, and devastating. It’s part ghost story, part psychological study, part tragicomedy about the lengths we’ll go to feel seen.
It’s rare to find a horror film that handles eating disorders, teenage alienation, and grief with such intelligence and empathy. Even rarer to find one that manages to make you smirk through the existential dread.
Rating: 9 out of 10 haunted calories.
Because sometimes, the scariest thing in the mirror isn’t the ghost — it’s your own reflection staring back and asking, “Are you still there?”
