SACCHARINE (2026)

Studio:   IFC/Shudder
Director: Natalie Erika James
Writer:   Natalie Erika James
Producer: Anna McLeish, Sarah Shaw, Natalie Erika James
Stars:    Midori Francis, Danielle Macdonald, Madeleine Madden, Robert Taylor

Review Score:

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Summary:

A med student with body image issues takes a weight loss pill made from human ashes, and finds it has the side effect of binding her to a haunting presence.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Hana Hitching, an Arton University medical student with low self-esteem due to body image issues, develops a crush on Alanya, an attractive fitness instructor at the university’s gym. Alanya invites Hana to join a 12-week diet and exercise program she will be conducting.

As part of a class assignment, Hana and her friend Josie perform an autopsy on an overweight cadaver. A fellow student jokingly nicknames the cadaver “Bertha.”

Hana and Josie go to a bar to celebrate Hana’s birthday. Hana unexpectedly runs into an old friend, Melissa, who lost a large amount of weight since Hana last saw her in high school. Melissa attributes her slender figure to an experimental weight loss pill, a few of which she gives to Hana to try.

After taking one of the pills, Hana gorges on food in a drunken stupor. The next day, Hana discovers she somehow lost weight.

Hana visits her parents Kimie and Travis to celebrate her birthday. Hana finds her distraught mother installing a security camera to monitor the refrigerator activity of Hana’s father due to his morbid obesity.

Looking to cheaply recreate Melissa’s diet pills because they are too expensive to purchase, Hana runs a lab test to determine the pill’s contents. Hana is surprised to learn the dominant ingredient is human ash.

Hana steals a ribcage from Bertha’s cadaver to make her own ashes for more pills. She also joins Alanya’s fitness program, and the positive results eventually endear her to Alanya. As this routine continues, an invisible presence that she sees as Bertha, but only in reflections, starts haunting Hana.

Hana continues losing weight despite still gorging on food. Bertha’s appearances become more frightening following a sleep paralysis nightmare in which Bertha’s bloated corpse merges with Hana’s body. As time goes by, Hana sees her visions of Bertha becoming bigger and seemingly stronger.

With Hana having lost so much weight, Alanya expresses concern that Hana isn’t following her diet guidelines. Alanya warns that whatever Hana might be doing outside of the program could be dangerous to her body. Denying the accusation of taking a shortcut, Hana inadvertently reveals her crush by admitting she just wanted Alanya to be impressed with her. Embarrassed by Alanya’s nonplussed reaction, Hana abruptly quits the fitness program and voraciously stress eats to deal with her shame.

Bertha’s invisible presence coaxes Hana into more gorging by sliding junk food to her across the kitchen floor. Hana hungrily gobbles up numerous candy bars and salty snacks.

At school, work continues on the examination of Bertha’s corpse. Hana is stunned to learn Bertha had pancreatic cancer.

After her exasperated mother Kimie leaves suddenly for a personal getaway, Hana goes to stay with her father Travis since he cannot be left alone. Having difficulty dealing with how his obesity reflects on her, Hana storms out in frustration.

Hana rejoins Alanya’s fitness program. In the locker room after a workout, Alanya apologizes for how she previously spoke to Hana, which leads to the two women kissing.

Hana decides to make a clean start by stopping the pills, throwing out her junk food, and preparing healthy meals. However, Bertha’s haunting intensifies as her invisible presence repeatedly open Hana’s fridge door, physically moves furniture, and menacingly stalks around Hana’s apartment. Waking to find her kitchen trashed, Hana questions if she has a sleep eating disorder or if she might be suffering from a spirit possession.

Hana meets with Melissa to ask for more information about the pills. Hana tells Melissa the pills are made from human ash, which surprises Melissa. Hana asks if Melissa ever experienced any blackouts or nightmares. Melissa admits she had some anxiety and felt like people were watching her, but those side effects stopped when she quit taking the pills.

Hana visits an oncologist for a physical exam to determine what might be wrong with her. An ultrasound finds a benign tumor on Hana’s pancreas, identical to Bertha’s affliction, leading Hana to wonder if the pills caused the growth.

In another class, Hana hallucinates cutting into a cadaver and finding cake. Seeing how her friend now looks sick, Josie confronts Hana over her alarming weight loss. Hana grows angry at Josie’s suggestion that she is punishing herself at the expense of changing who she is.

Hana musters the confidence to visit Alanya at her apartment. The two women end up having sex, although Hana insists on turning off the lights. Hana wakes later that night to discover she blacked out again and destroyed Alanya’s kitchen in another binge-eating incident. Hana rushes out in embarrassment.

Bertha’s invisible presence continues stalking Hana at her parents’ house. Still only visible in reflections, Bertha smashes an outside window to get into Hana’s bedroom. Hana binge eats to make the frightening figure go away.

Hana finishes the food on hand but her stomach continues rumbling. Hana raids her father’s fridge to appease Bertha. The next morning, security camera footage reveals Hana gorged on products that aren’t even edible. Disturbed by her own worrying weight loss, Hana has a confrontation with her father regarding his obesity.

Hana confides in Josie about everything happening to her. Explaining how she made weight loss pills from Bertha’s cadaver, Hana claims Bertha has latched onto her spiritually. Attempting to prove the existence of Bertha’s presence, Hana gives Josie a handful of spoons to see her reflection, which Hana believes appears when her blood sugar drops below a certain level. Josie does not see Bertha, but she comes to believe Hana’s claims when the invisible presence throws several items around the room.

Hana’s data reveals that the more calories she consumes, the more weight she loses. However, Bertha also gets larger, as though she is devouring Hana from the inside. Since Melissa’s visions ceased when she stopped taking the pills, Hana and Josie wonder what makes Bertha different.

Hana steals Bertha’s medical file, which reveals her real name was Grace Childs and her next of kin is a sister named Lucy. Hana and Josie visit Lucy at a tattoo parlor to learn more about Grace. Lucy tearfully tells them Grace never made peace with herself and used food to cope with her emotional pain. Hana concludes she must give back the remains she took from the cadaver to get the spirit to release her.

Hana returns to her apartment to find her mother Kimie threw out the cremated remains as part of an unannounced housecleaning. Incensed, Hana retrieves the ashes from the trash. Kimie grows upset when she sees her daughter gorging on food.

Bertha’s invisible presence violently attacks Kimie and trashes the apartment. Hana distracts the entity by telling her she is pathetic and no one loves her. Bertha attacks Hana, pinning her to the floor. Hana gulps down oven cleaner to make herself vomit so she can escape. She then rushes to a convenience store to guzzle directly from a slushie machine to keep Bertha at bay.

Hana summons Josie to meet her at the university morgue. Hana tells Josie her theory that the ash caused her to get a tumor in the same sport as Bertha, and she believes that by removing the growth, Hana can break her connection to the entity.

Hana confiscates Josie’s phone and locks her on the other side of a door as she reveals her plan to cut out the growth herself. After telling Josie she needs her to make sure she doesn’t bleed out, Hana snorts cocaine to numb herself while preparing a scalpel for self-surgery.

Falling into a vision of lying among trash bags while Bertha stalks toward her, Hana cuts out her tumor. Once the growth is removed, Bertha seemingly vanishes. Hana looks up to see a doppelganger dropping another trash bag down onto her. Hana tearfully smiles at her confused double.

Josie successfully revives Hana. Bertha’s body receives a formal cremation and Hana and Josie attend a memorial service for her along with Bertha’s sister.

Hana visits Alanya to apologize for what happened the last time they saw each other. Alanya’s reassurance leads to passionate kissing and then sex. Hana blacks out afterward. When she regains consciousness, Hana sees she tore open Alanya’s chest and had been eating her.

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Review:

Med school student Hana doesn’t like how she sees herself in the mirror her mind made. It isn’t just the distressing digits on her bathroom scale, which she records with the same obsessive compulsion compelling her to regularly medicate stress with junk food. Whether it’s Hana’s obese father having a security camera installed to monitor his refrigerator raids, or a bloated cadaver whose painted nails match the color on her own fingers, Hana can’t stand to confront any detail that reminds her of the poor body image sapping her self-esteem.

Hana has two paths in front of her to go from pessimistic to positive about her weight. The first is a 12-week fitness course offered by her gym, though that’s just as much to indulge in her crush on the attractive instructor, Alanya, as it is about being healthier. The second is a more unconventional approach to losing unwanted pounds.

Given a small sample from a former friend who halved her size since she was last seen in high school, Hana discovers a miracle diet pill that really works. No matter how many calories she consumes, the number on her scale keeps going down. Unfortunately, the high price of these pills puts a steady supply well out of Hana’s reach.

Thinking she might be able to concoct a generic alternative, Hana performs a lab test to uncover the wonder drug’s contents. Imagine her surprise when she discovers the key ingredient is cremated human remains. Just as weirdly, Hana’s med school status gives her access to corpses, meaning she actually can recreate the macabre medication and keep her peculiar weight-loss plan going.

Hana quickly discovers a side effect that would never have been listed on any label. The pill comes with a paranormal presence, visible only in reflections, and the entity takes an eerie interest in ensuring Hana doesn’t miss a dose so she can still gorge on cookies, cakes, crisps, and chips. Although Hana continues getting thinner despite the food still stuffed in her stomach, the frightening figure seems to grow in response, and the ways it haunts Hana become increasingly disturbing.

Men can and certainly do experience eating disorders, as represented by the character of Hana’s homebound father who can’t get around without help from his mobility scooter. However, Hana’s father is the only male figure of any real note, with one other being a fellow student who somewhat cruelly nicknames an oversized cadaver “Bertha,” making “Saccharine” a very female-forward movie. Hana’s best friend, love interest, and the mother who constitute her primary interactions are all women. Not that men can’t equally appreciate the film as art or as entertainment, “Saccharine” merely earns this mention for having a thematic specificity that directs its material at some demographics more than others.

The other asterisk to take into consideration is “Saccharine’s” intent to appeal to imaginations moving in step with its arthouse aesthetics. Those who naturally take to atmospheric, metaphor-filled horror should still approach with informed reservation. Even the slowest of slow burns don’t often hit this low of a speed. “Saccharine” is not without activity, but it is not sustained by action-packed intensity.

Most of the movie walks by with minimal spoken dialogue. Tumultuous thoughts turning over in Hana’s head are chiefly expressed through reactions on her expressive face, brief looks at lines she writes in a journal, and bouts of binging that highlight the agony and the ecstasy of eating as an addiction. Psychological drama occasionally solidifies into physical scares whenever there’s a quick glimpse of the entity, or when it invisibly stalks around to unsettle Hana, though visceral shocks aren’t the side of the bread where the film butters its suggestive dread.

Obviously, the movie means well with its message warning against dangerous extremes dominating a desperate search for acceptance, from others as well as from yourself. Yet it’s difficult to enthusiastically recommend “Saccharine” because that message doesn’t dig deep. As an illustration of body image issues manifesting as a parasitic “demon” of sorts, “Saccharine’s” impact doesn’t resonate as much more than a common cautionary tale about compromising one’s character in pursuit of an unrealistic ideal that’s been perverted by misperceptions. This lower-budget look inside a fracturing psyche also has a hard time making a splash when similar efforts such as “The Substance” (review here) already made bigger waves with overlapping ideas.

Taking a long, roundabout road to reach its expected destination, “Saccharine’s” four-door sedan limits it to surface streets of suspense while more impressive sportscars race by on horror’s highway. That could be a crass analogy to make when discussing a film where the lead wishes she were a sleeker, sexier, more appealing model of essentially the same vehicle. Sadly, the comparison seems apt for a movie whose comparatively ordinary construction has a difficult time holding its own against competitors in the same class.

Review Score: 55

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