A Feast of Regret
There are bad horror movies, and then there’s Famine—a cinematic experience so nutritionally empty it makes eating drywall seem like a better evening. Directed by Ryan Nicholson (yes, the same guy responsible for several other bodily-fluid-based art projects masquerading as films), Famine is a 2011 Canadian slasher that promises cheap thrills, gore, and a satirical edge. What it delivers instead is a buffet of stupidity served on a tray of moldy jokes.
It’s also known under alternate titles like Stupid Teens Must Die! and Detention Night, which—credit where it’s due—are far more honest. Those names at least warn you what you’re in for: stupidity, detention, and death. The movie itself? It’s what happens when a high school AV club gets access to a slaughterhouse, a case of fake blood, and absolutely no adult supervision.
Hunger Games for Idiots
The setting is Sloppy Secondary High School. (Yes, that’s the actual name. No, it’s not meant to be ironic.) A new teacher, Ms. Vickers, organizes a 24-hour charity famine where students voluntarily starve themselves in the school gym. Because nothing raises awareness for global hunger like horny teenagers trapped in a gymnasium with a serial killer.
Ten students sign up, all motivated by extra credit, because apparently this school’s GPA system rewards you for skipping meals and dying creatively. There’s Cathy, the traumatized survivor from a previous tragedy; Jenny, the plucky Final Girl archetype; Nick, Darren, Vanessa, and several other human sacrifices so bland they could be replaced by paper plates.
The premise could’ve worked as biting satire—pun absolutely intended—but Nicholson shoots it like a YouTube parody that somehow got lost and grew fungus in post-production.
The Legend of The Nailer (and Other Bad Decisions)
Enter The Nailer, the school’s mascot turned killer, a masked figure in a carpenter costume who looks like he raided Michael Myers’ garage sale. The Nailer begins his killing spree before the famine even starts, immediately axing Katie—who’s caught stashing food in a bathroom—with a knife to the forehead. It’s the film’s most subtle moment.
From there, it’s open season on logic. Terry gets his throat slit while tampering with cafeteria food. Peterson, in what might be the most profoundly stupid death in horror history, is impaled mid-coitus—with a Swiss Roll. Yes, he dies while having sex with a dessert. If Freud had seen this movie, he’d have retired early.
Meanwhile, other characters drop like flies in increasingly grotesque ways, none of which are scary but all of which are filmed like Nicholson’s trying to win a pie-eating contest judged by Satan.
Dialogue Written by a Sentient Axe
The script is a marvel of creative bankruptcy. Every line sounds like it was translated from English to Pig Latin and back again. Characters speak exclusively in sarcasm, sexual innuendo, and exposition, sometimes all in the same breath.
Example: a girl mourns her dead friend for three seconds before pivoting to a joke about getting laid. Another moment has someone watching gay porn for no apparent reason except to fill runtime and confuse the audience. Nicholson’s approach to character development is simple: give everyone a stereotype, then kill them in a way that matches it.
The dialogue is so bad it achieves a kind of anti-art. By the third act, I half-expected the characters to start discussing the script itself, asking, “Why are we still here?”
The Gore Buffet
To give credit where it’s due (briefly), the practical effects are at least… consistent. Nicholson, a former special effects artist, knows his way around fake entrails, and the film spares no opportunity to show them. There’s blood, viscera, sliced flesh, and more disembowelments than a medieval surgery manual.
But the gore never shocks—it just exhausts. Every kill feels like someone yelling “LOOK AT ME!” through a megaphone while juggling intestines. It’s not scary. It’s not funny. It’s just messy.
The tonal whiplash between cartoonish violence and mean-spirited sexual jokes gives Famine the atmosphere of a frat party hosted in a morgue.
The Big “Twist”
And then there’s the grand revelation: Ms. Vickers, the teacher, is actually Philip Balszack—the disfigured organizer from the previous famine—back for revenge after a tragic accident involving teenage cruelty and spilled acid. Oh, and Balszack has undergone gender reassignment surgery.
It’s a twist so tasteless it makes Sleepaway Camp look progressive. Instead of exploring identity or trauma, Nicholson uses gender transition as a punchline and a grotesque plot gimmick. It’s cheap, lazy, and weirdly hateful. The film seems to think this is shocking, when really it’s just sad—an exploitation of a real human experience for the sake of another bad slasher cliché.
By the time the characters start mutilating each other in a final bloodbath, you stop caring who dies. When the killer dies face-first on a knife, it’s less a climax and more a mercy killing.
Acting in the Key of Panic
To say the performances are “uneven” would imply there was ever a balance. The cast alternates between soap opera dramatics and high school improv night. Christine Wallace, as Jenny, does her best to carry the film, but even Meryl Streep couldn’t sell dialogue like “He was impaled… with a snack cake!”
Beth Cantor, as Cathy, spends most of her screen time screaming or explaining things we already know. Michelle Sabiene, as Ms. Vickers/Balszack, deserves hazard pay for trying to inject menace into a role written like a rejected Glee villain.
Everyone else plays their parts like they’re auditioning for a haunted house attraction, waving fake blood around and hoping nobody asks for refunds.
The Spirit of Sloppy Secondary
Visually, Famine looks like it was filmed through a ketchup packet. The lighting alternates between “public bathroom” and “broken flashlight.” The camerawork feels allergic to stability, and the editing moves with the rhythm of a malfunctioning blender.
Nicholson clearly wants the film to look like a gritty, neon-soaked throwback to 1980s slashers—but it ends up looking like someone smeared Vaseline over a VHS tape and called it a style choice.
The score, meanwhile, is the audio equivalent of a migraine: pounding, repetitive, and seemingly composed on a stolen Casio keyboard.
The Humor (or Lack Thereof)
Make no mistake—Famine is supposed to be funny. Nicholson thinks he’s making a parody of high school slashers. But the jokes land with all the grace of a chainsaw in a daycare. The film is mean where it thinks it’s edgy, juvenile where it thinks it’s clever, and cringeworthy where it thinks it’s meta.
The result is a horror-comedy without either horror or comedy—a genre vacuum where good taste goes to starve.
The Starvation Strategy
In a twisted way, the “famine” theme fits the experience of watching the movie. You feel deprived—of logic, of pacing, of entertainment. By the halfway point, you’ll find yourself praying for sustenance in the form of coherent storytelling or, failing that, the sweet relief of the credits.
When Jenny finally emerges alive, wearing The Nailer’s mask and carrying a nail gun, it’s not empowerment—it’s exhaustion. The final shot doesn’t make you cheer; it makes you reach for snacks, as if to replace all the calories you lost watching this cinematic fast.
The Aftertaste
Famine is a film that manages to starve both the body and the brain. It’s tasteless, tedious, and occasionally offensive, but it’s also weirdly fascinating in its ineptitude. You can’t look away, like watching a school play directed by a serial killer.
Some bad movies are so bad they’re good. Famine is so bad it’s malnourished.
Verdict: ★☆☆☆☆
A grotesque smorgasbord of bad acting, worse writing, and blood-soaked stupidity. You won’t be scared, you won’t laugh, but you might lose your appetite—and in that sense, maybe the famine worked after all.
