Review: Starve

Starve premiered on October 20th as part of the SyFy’s 31 Days of Halloween specials. I’m a big fan of Griff Furst and after the disaster that was the past weekend’s Finders Keepers, I thought, “How bad could it be?” These are my thoughts.

Starve is written by Xander Wolf and directed by Griff Furst. Griff Furst is most known for directing I Am Omega, Wolvesbayne, Mask Maker, Lake Placid III, Swamp Shark, Arachnoquake, and Ghost Shark. Cast members in Starve include Bobby Campo (The Final Destination, “Being Human”), Dave Randolph-Mayhem Davis (Leprechaun’s Revenge, American Horror House), Mariah Bonner (The Social Network), Thomas Francis Murphy (“Salem”), Cooper Huckabee (“True Blood”), Johnny McPhail (“True Detective”), Jessica Lemon Wilkinson, Elise Fyke, and Casey Dillard.

“While researching an urban legend on feral children, three friends find themselves trapped in an abandoned high school, where they are confronted with an evil more sinister than the legend itself.”

The biggest reason I stayed on SyFy and didn’t change he channel during Starve was because of the neat concept. The best way to describe Starve is The Hunger Games meets The Collection. The movie starts and about fifteen minutes in I was certain that it was going to be a hillbilly cannibal kind of movie. Imagine my surprise when a small group of young people are locked in an abandoned high school and forced to participate in sick games for food so they don’t starve to death. The idea of “what would you do to not starve to death?” was pretty cool, and original. It’s a little like Saw, too, in that there is a creepy guy behind a monitor forcing the young people to battle for survival against scissor wielding women and other crazy things.

As far as the acting goes, everyone did a fantastic job. There were a couple of moments where I think a little more reaction was warranted, but other than that… Good job, especially for a SyFy Original Movie. The two leads, played by Bobby Campo and Mariah Bonner were my favorites, although I’m not exactly clear if they were brother and sister or boyfriend and girlfriend? Maybe the second male lead, Dave Randolph-Mayhem Davis was the boyfriend or brother and that’s where I’m getting confused. My other favorite, the detective played by Jessica Lemon Wilkinson, was reminiscent of so many woman who have played cops in horror films. I wish we got to see more of her because she had this nostalgic look/feel of the female cops in horror films from the 90s.

I don’t think I’d consider Starve a full fledged horror title. If anything I’d say it’s a horror-thriller. I think the point of Starve is to be more mentally and emotionally damaging than gory. Sure, it has some gory and blood moments, but I think the selling point is the friends’ desire to survive and what they were willing to do to survive. Very mysterious, very suspenseful, and very fucked up. And, as with most SyFy Original Movies, it was produced expertly. It had a cool dusty quality to it that fit with the theme of an abandoned school. The editing pieced it all together well, there were some cool angles and lots of action shots. Another really solid effort from Griff Furst.

I’ll never forget how anxious I felt when I saw the one guy wrapped head to toe in duct tape!

I’m going to rate this one a 6 out of 10. I enjoyed it. The concept was there…but I felt that the writer and director never took it all the way there. It was missing the “oomph” factor that I look for in films, something that would make me watch it again.