Fast weight-loss methods have never been easier or more readily available, but they come at a cost — and for the young, dangerously experimenting protagonist of “Saccharine,” that’s higher and more damaging than a monthly Wegovy subscription. The third feature from writer-director Natalie Erika James is a timely one, tapping into a current medical phenomenon while also aligning itself with a run of recent genre fare (most notably the 2024 sleeper “The Substance”) predicated on female body insecurity. Real-life horror of one’s own body is the most insidious kind of body horror at play here, though James’ film offers a measure of the gorily fantastical stuff too.
“Saccharine” marks a homecoming for its Australian helmer, who broke out in 2020 with “Relic,” an unusual and unexpectedly devastating horror film that located its humane terrors in late-stage dementia — before heading to the U.S. for the sleekly crafted but inevitably less distinctive “Rosemary’s Baby” prequel “Apartment 7A.” Set and shot in Melbourne on a seemingly modest but well-used budget, “Saccharine” proves James’ gifts are better served by more independent means, even if it falls short of the emotional and dramatic heft that gave “Relic” equal genre and arthouse appeal. Following festival dates at Sundance and Berlin, it’s set to be released as a streaming original on home turf, with IFC and Shudder partnering for its Stateside release.
Sporting a credible Aussie accent, former “Grey’s Anatomy” regular Midori Francis once more dons a set of scrubs as Hana, a Melbourne medical student whose requisite pledge to first do no harm doesn’t appear to have extended to herself. Tormented by the perception that her perfectly healthy-looking body is severely overweight, she bounces between phases of binge-eating and self-punishment, eventually signing up for an intensive 12-week transformation program pitched by svelte gym trainer Alanya (Madeleine Madden) — though her attraction to Alanya may be the main motivating factor there.
Around the same time, however, she thrown off course by a chance reunion with a former school friend: once plus-size, now unrecognizably skinny, and a pushy advocate for an exclusive new weight-loss pill she calls simply “The Gray.” Tempted but reluctant to fork out the money, Hana runs some tests on the drug, and finds — in what one hopes is just a grim horror-film twist — that its composition comes down pretty much entirely to human ashes. Somehow not sufficiently horrified to halt matters then and there, she resolves instead to make her own Gray, stealing and cremating flesh from the cadaver she and fellow student Josie (an underused Danielle Macdonald) have been assigned for research.
Sure enough, the pounds start falling off, at a rate that concerns the increasingly interested Alanya. But it turns out that ingesting incinerated human remains is a bad idea for reasons beyond even the many glaringly obvious ones. Before long, the spirit of the cadaver — an obese cancer victim, crassly nicknamed Big Bertha by the students — is raised, seemingly angered not just by this macabre violation of her corpse, but by the increasingly drawn and sickly Hana’s new regimen. The ensuing fallout is less frightening than it is queasy, though there are some jolts courtesy of expert gross-out prosthetics and old-school ghost-story effects. That “Bertha” is only visible to Hana in spoons and other such concave reflective surfaces is a neat, witty visual touch.
However, the fact that the cadaver’s large, decaying form is used to increasingly monstrous jump-scare effect, haunting Hana’s dreams and causing physical havoc in her waking hours, is a device that risks undermining “Saccharine’s” generally body-positive message — though one could argue for that depiction as a manifestation of the protagonist’s own most extreme bodily neuroses. Also questionably handled is a psychologically illuminating subplot around Hana’s family history of weight problems, teased with some needlessly shadowy ambuigity ahead of a surprise reveal. There’s a fine, touching performance, however, from Showko Showfukutei as Hana’s loving but fretful mother, desperately concerned for her daughter’s well-being but inclined to show love only through unrequired domestic service.
Francis gives warm, vulnerable grounding to a character whose choices are frequently, on the face of it, inexplicable: “Saccharine” functions as a cautionary tale for the mania caused by a relentlessly body-conscious culture, tainting everything from friendly conversation to punitively aspirational Instagram feeds. “Saccharine,” for its part, does much to deglamorize its gaze, beginning with the scuzzy lighting and seasick palette of DP Charlie Sarroff’s lensing.
But it’s aurally that the film is most disquieting. Hannah Peel’s inventive score merges gasping vocal expressions with grinding, dehumanized mechanical instrumentation, while sound designer Robert Mackenzie eerily amplifies shortened breathing, groaning physical exertions and, of course, the regular chomp and smack of chewing. It all amounts to a kind of anti-ASMR — if anything, you leave “Saccharine” craving some sensory underload.
English (US) ·