featuring @maslowentertainment
Natalie Erika James’s Saccharine offers a stomach-churning dive into the dangerous crossroads of diet culture, body dysmorphia, and supernatural revenge. Building on her acclaimed debut Relic, James returns with a bolder, more visceral horror that shifts from slow-burning dread to shocking practical effects and sharp social critique. This is timely, visceral genre filmmaking for the Ozempic era—where miracle weight-loss solutions promise perfection but deliver something far more sinister.
Midori Francis shines as Hana, a driven medical student trapped in a cycle of bingeing, self-loathing, and compulsive tracking of every gram. Her performance is equal parts vulnerable, fierce, and heartbreaking as her quest for an “ideal” body (framed against social pressures, gym culture, and personal insecurities) spirals into self-destruction. Desperate to impress her gym-trainer crush and escape familial and societal judgment, Hana stumbles into a mysterious weight-loss “craze” involving pills with a horrifying secret ingredient: human ashes. Armed with lab access and a cadaver nicknamed “Big Bertha,” she engineers her own supply. The pounds melt away, but so does her sanity, as the spirit of the deceased begins haunting her—often visible only in distorted reflections, a clever visual metaphor for warped body perception.
James masterfully intertwines the personal, political, and physiological. The routines of calorie counting, mirror-gazing, and shame-driven eating are portrayed with intimate detail before transforming into horror that vividly embodies the consuming nature of diet culture. It’s deeply unsettling in the best possible way—fans of The Substance, Raw, or Dumplings will find plenty to sink their teeth into.
Saccharine is a sickly-sweet triumph of discomfort. It won’t go down easy, but James proves she’s a filmmaker unafraid to probe the ugliest corners of embodiment and desire. In an age of filtered perfection and quick-fix pharmaceuticals, this is horror that lingers like a bad aftertaste—reminding us that the pursuit of “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” might just consume you whole.
Screening at Luna Leederville & Luna on SX from July 9.
- Email: neill@outloudculture.com
- Socials: @frazer.live
- @neill.outloud
