Vague Visages’ Saccharine review contains minor spoilers. Natalie Erika James’ 2026 movie features Midori Francis, Madeleine Madden and Danielle Macdonald. Check out the VV home page for more film criticism, movie reviews and film essays.

Women are frequently the heroes in horror, but although Final Girls end up battered, bruised and covered in blood by the end of the movie, female characters are rarely allowed to be truly gross. In recent years, that’s gradually been changing, thanks to the likes of Raw (2016), The Substance (2024) and The Ugly Stepsister (2025). The crucial difference is that women are finally behind the camera, as well as in front of it. The influence of all three aforementioned movies (and many others) can be felt in Saccharine, the latest project from Japanese-Australian filmmaker Natalie Erika James (Relic, 2020). A harrowing and suitably disgusting deep dive into the negative effects of diet culture, the 112-minute movie doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to presenting exactly what women go through by simply existing in their bodies.

Hana (Midori Francis) is a promising medical student with a tight-knit group of like-minded girlfriends, and she’s a queer woman who is reasonably at peace with her identity. There’s just one problem: the protagonist is overweight and desperate to be skinny by any means necessary. After running into an old friend who’s had massive success with a miracle pill that supposedly “melts fat no matter what you eat,” Hana does some research and discovers that human ashes are the main component. So, she steals body parts from a university cadaver and makes her own, which begs the uncomfortable question — would you essentially resort to cannibalism just to be thin? Kim Kardashian famously admitted that she would eat literal excrement to look younger, and the craziest part about that quote is that, to be completely frank, it doesn’t really sound that insane, as most of us have resorted to extreme measures to lose weight fast. If nothing else, Hana is resourceful (and thrifty) in her quest.

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Naturally, consuming human ashes has drawbacks. Aside from rapid weight loss, Hana is haunted by Bertha, the morbidly obese cadaver she pilfered from; a phantom who lurks in the periphery of her vision with a gaping maw while emitting horrible, guttural noises that echo the stomach growls with which Hana is now afflicted. The ghost only shows up in convex glass, such as a kettle or a spoon, which gives James the opportunity to play around with some seriously nerve-rattling visuals while also not relying too heavily on unconvincing CGI. Reflections feature frequently in Relic, but in this case, they’re utilized to both startle Hana and to force her to confront some of her darkest impulses.

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A couple of well-meaning women, who are notably at opposing ends of the body image spectrum, also attempt to force Hana to see the error of her ways before it’s too late. BFF Josie (the reliably great Danielle Macdonald, who should really be a bigger star by now) snarks about the protagonist being in “fat camp,” while love interest Alanya (Madeleine Madden), a personal trainer whose course Francis’ character takes part in, warns her charge about going too hard and too fast. Neither of them believes Hana needs to change significantly to be happy — she’s hardly dangerously overweight, to be fair — but Josie is fat-positive while Alanya is fit and lean. The point is that neither option requires extreme starvation or binge-eating, and certainly not imbibing human ashes. But Hana is too much in her own head to get that.

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James, who also wrote Saccharine’s scalpel-sharp screenplay, establishes early on that food is a drug for Hana. While the character’s friends snort ketamine, she stuffs her face or stares hungrily at a plate of fries. Food is shot to look enticing, with even a load of spoiled donuts in a garbage positioned as though they’re watching Hana, and this is long before Bertha repeatedly opens the fridge or nudges junk food across the floor to tempt her. Saccharine opens with graphic and deliberately stomach-churning footage of Hana eating in reverse, while oozing liquids and goos proliferate throughout the film. At one point, honey slowly leaks all over Hana’s stationery and covers everything. The idea is that she can’t escape the lure of eating, which is a feeling many women will identify with. Even with a detailed food diary and a strict goal weight in mind, there’s no winning for poor Hana.

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Because the nebbish Hana studies medicine, she’s super smart and resourceful, which makes the central conceit of Saccharine easier to swallow. There are sly references to the protagonist studying various stomach issues, while her mother warns against neglecting an altar in the family home lest “hungry ghosts” swarm it. The movie could arguably be taken as a metaphor for disordered eating, since Hana routinely binges, including in her sleep, and then feels terrible about herself afterwards. Francis’ magnetic lead performance is intensely physically demanding, whether her character is gorging, fighting off Bertha or performing surgery on herself. It’s an utterly unvarnished take. At the risk of calling Francis “brave,” her acting is very committed and vanity-free. Once Hana loses weight, the lead actress appears onscreen without makeup to ensure she looks drawn rather than aspirational.

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Although James presents her story without judgment, it’s clear that she doesn’t want Hana’s plight to be seen as anything but sad and entirely avoidable. The writer-director’s shrewd observations about the pressure on women to look a certain way at all costs involves her taking aim at everything from Ozempic to overbearing parents, as Hana’s mother is obsessed with making her daughter smaller, while the father — who’s barely glimpsed until the final act — is confined to the family home due to his weight. The overwhelming feeling is that women can’t win no matter what, which is something that Saccharine’s body horror contemporaries also dissect with ruthless precious. A sequence set atop a pile of garbage bags is devastating in its ability to communicate how little women think of themselves after indulging a little too much. Likewise, there’s a banger of a payoff for a recurring image of a nude woman reclining with her organs on display. Even when women tear themselves open, it’s not enough.

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Despite the title, Saccharine has a satisfyingly tangy bite to it. Hannah Peel’s enigmatic score is comprised primarily of breathy female voices, while Charlie Sarroff’s evocative cinematography favors sharp angles, emphasizing towering buildings and deep crevasses, especially with the decaying cadaver that Hana pores over in class. Bertha resembles Stellan Skarsgård’s Baron Harkonnen from Dune: Part One (2021), a combination of prosthetics and smartly employed CGI bring the terrifying creation to life in the movie’s darkest and quietest moments. Likewise, Midori’s makeup and prosthetics are equally impressive. This isn’t Shallow Hal (2001) territory — Hana, alongside Josie, is just a regular sized woman, which further adds to the sense that she should focus on healing herself inwardly before trying to “fix” the outside.

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Saccharine packs less of an emotional punch than Relic, which is steeped in generational trauma, but it’s no less effective as a horror movie. In this case, the central demon is internal and of her own making, which makes the focus of James’ latest project even more universal. Aside from the gruesome body horror and an incisive take on the perils of a woman’s body image, Saccharine is an effective queer love story and a surprisingly moving tale of female friendship surviving against increasingly insurmountable odds. Let women be gross!

Joey Keogh (@JoeyLDG) is a writer from Dublin, Ireland with an unhealthy appetite for horror movies and Judge Judy. In stark contrast with every other Irish person ever, she’s straight edge. Hello to Jason Isaacs. Thank you for reading film criticism, movie reviews and film reviews at Vague Visages.

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