While many still write the horror genre off as nothing but sleezy slashers, that’s okay. Because what better place for cutting, subversive social commentary than in a genre that is often completely overlooked for its artistic value? Today we will be looking at 10 horror films about the hell of living with an eating disorder.
If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, help is out there. Call the National Alliance for Eating Disorders at 1 (866) 662-1235.
1. Trauma
The 1993 film Trauma is directed and co-written by horror icon Dario Argento. It centers around a young man trying to help a teenage girl find the serial killer who murdered her parents before the killer comes after them. The female lead, Aura (Asia Argento), suffers from a severe eating disorder due to her traumatic past. While on the surface, our villain is the serial killer, Aura is already dying from what her sick brain is doing to the rest of her body.
2. Thinner
Based on a Stephen King novel of the same name, this 1996 film is directed and co-written by Tom Holland (Child’s Play). Thinner tells the story of Billy Halleck (Robert John Burke), an obese attorney who is cursed to rapidly lose weight. In the beginning of the film, Billy is seen as a stereotypical gluttonous, sleazy lawyer. But after the curse takes effect, no matter how much he eats, he cannot stop losing weight. Now, to most people, that sounds like a dream, but Billy is dying due to how fast his body is shedding pounds. Not to mention how thin he eventually becomes. All human bodies need some fat deposits to function properly, and his are fading fast. His weight loss is not a blessing, but a curse, literally.
3. Slaughtered Vomit Dolls
Note: we are fully aware of the allegations against the director of this film. Its inclusion is purely due to it meeting the criteria for this list and is in no way endorsing how it was made or the actions of its creator.
This 2006 film was written and directed by Lucifer Valentine. It stars Ameara LeVay as Angela Aberdeen, a 19-year-old bulimic stripper. She spends the bulk of the film descending “into a hellish pit of satanic nightmares and hallucinations.” Apparently manifesting as her being naked and frequently vomiting. It is considered the founding film for the vomit gore subgenre.
4. Drag Me to Hell
This 2009 Sam Raimi-directed and co-written film is one of the less obvious examples of this theme. The story follows Christine Brown (Alison Lohman), an ambitious loan officer who is gunning for a big promotion at her bank job. Unfortunately, in an attempt to prove herself to her boss, she rejects an old woman for a loan who in turn curses her. What follows is her being plagued by what seems to be supernatural forces out to destroy her.
However, many see the film as an allegory for Christine having an eating disorder. Breaking down all the symbolism would be an article in itself. For the sake of brevity, we’ll hit some highlights:
- Most of Christine’s lies revolve around food or eating.
- In several scenes, she is only seen drinking water/coffee or picking at her food but not consuming it, when other characters are clearly enjoying a meal.
- Most of the attacks by the supernatural entity center around food, like a rather brutal attack scene in her kitchen. Which, of course, happens when she is all alone, and no one else can see what happened.
5. Excess Flesh
This 2015 film is directed and co-written by Patrick Kennelly. It tells the story of Jill (Effie Lavore), a bulimic woman who is obsessed with her new roommate Jennifer (Mary Loveless). Eventually, Jill decides that if she can’t be Jennifer, she must destroy her by imprisoning her in their apartment. Jill’s insecurities about her own body are at the heart of her violent attack on Jennifer.
6. Swallow
Carlo Mirabella-Davis’s 2019 film centers around Hunter (Haley Bennett), a newly pregnant housewife. Her days at home are long and full of chores, but soon she finds herself increasingly compelled to consume dangerous objects. Her behavior only gets worse when her husband and in-laws try to tighten their grip on her. This sends her into a spiral that forces Hunter to confront the dark secret behind her obsession.
The horror here is triggered by Hunter being trapped in a golden cage. Yeah, her life looks incredible, but her husband makes it clear his love for her is contingent on her ability to give him a child. The deeper into her pregnancy she gets, the less freedom her husband allows her. Most of our films so far have centered around either eating/purging and an excess amount of food, or severe calorie restriction. This film focuses more on the consuming of inedible objects that could easily be deadly, for example, a battery.
7. The Neon Demon
This 2016 film is directed and co-written by Nicolas Winding Refn. It centers around an aspiring model, Jesse (Elle Fanning), who just arrived in Los Angeles. However, her beauty and youth make her a target for violence and jealousy in the industry, pointing to something much more sinister at play.
Several of the models in the film manage their weight in clearly disordered ways. Underfeeding and the bingeing/purging cycle can cause aggressive behavior. This erratic feeding causes serotonin levels to be all over the place, which will put anyone in a bad mood. And not to sound reductive, but being hangry is a very real thing. A lot of the violence we see here may be influenced by malnutrition from eating disorders.
8. Shapeless
Directed by Samantha Aldana, this 2019 movie tells the story of Ivy (Kelly Angell), a struggling singer in New Orleans. She is soon trapped by her own eating disorder and must face the addiction of becoming a monster.
9. The Substance
Coralie Fargeat’s 2025 film focuses on Elisabeth (Demi Moore), a fading celebrity. Desperate to regain her youth and fame, she takes a new black-market drug called the substance, which helps her create a “better” version of herself.
Eating disorders aren’t as explicit here as you’d expect from a film about actresses. Moore has spoken in the past about her struggles with the industry and her own battles with eating disorders. So much of her character was fueled by her very real struggles over her decades-long career.
“There is a lot of torment I put myself through when I was younger,” Moore told Elle. “The perfect example is when I was told to lose weight multiple times. The producer pulled me aside. It was very embarrassing and humiliating. But that’s just one thing. How I internalized it and how it moved me to a place of such torture and harshness against myself, of real extreme behaviors, and that I placed almost all the value of who I was on my body being a certain way—that’s on me.”
10. Saccharine
Written and directed by Natalie Erika James, Saccharine is the latest entry on this list. The film tells the story of Hana (Midori Francis), a lovelorn medical student obsessed with losing weight. Desperate, she takes part in the latest diet fad, eating human ashes, which in this universe causes the pounds to come right off. The problem is the corpse isn’t super happy about being eaten, and they start to haunt her.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, House IV, Taxidermia, and #Horror all contain either a scene that references eating disorders or one secondary character who is suffering from one. This rather extreme subversive commentary on modern beauty standards is peppered throughout the genre, with more examples than we could ever hope to list. Creating a not-so-subtle pushback against the lengths that many are expected to go through just to be “conventionally attractive.”
In a genre that is often maligned for only casting thin-waisted, well-endowed women. It’s actually a surprising, albeit grim and often over-the-top, repository for body positivity. Because in the end, being thin will never be worth your life, and no amount of emotional pain can be fixed with a spoon. Despite many afflicted being fully aware of those facts, sometimes you need a blunt or gory reminder of the truth.
And if you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, help is out there. Call the National Alliance for Eating Disorders at 1 (866) 662-1235.
