Saccharine
This supernatural body horror film bites deep into gore and body image themes as a medical student obsessed with losing weight finds corpulent cadavers creeping up on her.
Just my luck to encounter “Saccharine” while on a low-carb, low-sugar diet.
On the one hand, the many scenes of sticky sweet confections being crammed down the protagonist’s throat might make one’s eyes dart toward the pantry. But then, they come in between many ultra-gory shots of bodies flayed and decayed, so the stomach turns sour.
This Australian flick from writer/director Natalie Erika James (“Relic”) certainly is not stingy in its portions of frightful fruit. It’s also fairly original for the scary movie genre, what you’d call a supernatural body horror that bites deep into body image themes.
Call it a companion piece to “The Substance,” but leaving the voyeuristic hypocrisy on the plate.
The movie could’ve used some tidying up — at 112 minutes, it probably could have shed a few in the editing bay — but “Saccharine” is another example of the resurgence of the horror genre, particularly from young, non-American and female perspectives.
Midori Francis plays Hana, a Japanese/Australian first-year medical student. Her entire life is centered around books, studying and the new section she’s starting where they dissect real cadavers over the course of a few weeks — their first real patients, the professor professes.
On her rare free nights, she’ll go out drinking with fellow students, especially Josie (Danielle Macdonald), as they’re similar situated: smart young lesbians carrying a few extra kilograms. On one such night she encounters Melissa (Annie Shapero), a former school mate she barely recognizes from her dramatic weight loss. From her she learns about some mysterious, non-approved pills — “the gray,” is all she’ll call it.
Hana accepts a few as a gift (surely a lure so she’ll start buying the pricey drugs) and is surprised when she starts losing weight, despite not changing her unhealthy eating habits. She also signs up for an intense workout class headed by Alanya (Madeleine Madden), a good sort she’s exchanged moony glances with at the gym.
In short order her life has completely upended itself. She drops about 50 pounds to reach her goal weight… and then keeps going.
Disturbingly, she starts eating even more — what you’d call binge eating. She’ll wake up from a trance to find her refrigerator completely emptied. And she begins to see visions of the corpulent cadaver her team has been working on, which one idjit dubs “Big Bertha.”
It seems an unholy spiritual connection has formed between them, owing to some ghastly action on Hana’s part I’ll leave to you to discover. If she stops eating at a grotesque pace, Bertha’s ghostly manifestations start to become angrier and more overt.
The filmmakers achieve the transformation for Francis with the usual methods, fat suits plus some facial prosthetics. It’s not on the level of “The Whale,” but is convincing enough. Similar tricks are used when Hana’s figure starts resembling a concentration camp prisoner.
It’s Francis’ performance that really anchors the piece, though. She paints a compelling portrait of a normal, healthy young woman who is yanked around by societal norms, and also her own morbid curiosity, to delve into occult-ish practices using her scientific skills as a tool. We feel how she’s being pushed and pulled in different directions, smart enough to know what she’s doing is wrong but juiced by the appeal of a skinny self.
I appreciated the backstory of her parents, a prototypical over-controlling Asian mom (Showko Showfukutei) and a remote father (Robert Taylor) who himself is morbidly obese. Hana saw the dysfunction between them, with her mother feeling tied down to caring for an essential invalid. And this subtly feeds into her own complex, contrasting feelings about her weight and sex appeal.
She practically vibrates when Alanya starts paying her more attention, featuring her as a success story in her social posts, with the hint of potentially something more between them. A think the film’s title, which isn’t said or directly referenced, speaks to the sugar rush one feels when seen as desirable and accepted.
I’ll stress again: “Saccharine” ain’t for the faint of heart. There are many displays of the human body — both outside and in — that are as anatomically accurate as they are stupendously revolting.
Though the movie is a little overstuffed, it’s sure to make you squirm, and maybe skip a meal.