Review: ‘Excess Flesh’ is an ugly overindulgence in misogyny

In the supremely ugly “Excess Flesh,” made with consuming vitriol by director and co-writer Patrick Kennelly, the subject of romantically desperate women with corrosive body image issues is treated as so much cartoony horror.

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Trapped in a Silver Lake apartment — along with any moviegoer suckered into seeing this — are Jennifer (Mary Loveless), a skinny, snarling fashion industry climber, and Jill (Bethany Orr), the roomie she insults as fat, who binges, barfs, hits herself and generally behaves like an unsocialized weirdo. When Jennifer’s mean-girl abuse reaches a boiling point, the deteriorating Jill shackles Jennifer to the wall and the movie becomes “Single White Female-Hating” as the apartment becomes a Dumpster for not only half-consumed, smeared or regurgitated food but also the filmmakers’ gleeful misogyny.

The repetitively fetishistic camera work and lunatic-asylum sound cues are meant to signify a nod to something psychological and pointed, but all it is is bilious, empty-calorie extremism, and it only ever drags you where you expect. The nagging question, really, is whether the very game leads — considering what they’re subjected to as the characters’ degradation piles up — needed therapy afterward.

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“Excess Flesh.”

No MPAA rating.

Running time: 1 hour, 43 minutes.

Playing: At the Downtown Independent.