The cultural obsession with thinness that has long shaped beauty standards, especially in the entertainment industry, is at the core of a new body-horror movie, Saccharine.
The movie is written and directed by Natalie Erika James of Relic and Apartment 7A fame.
The chilling trailer, released on April 22, shows a lovelorn medical student, Hana, who is dissatisfied with how her body looks and succumbs to a questionable, obscure weight-loss craze: eating human ashes.
“I’m picturing a descent into madness where she can’t tell the difference between a medical symptom and a haunting,” a netizen speculated under the film’s trailer, which was released on April 22.
Saccharine focuses on the “toxic messaging” of unrealistic body standards
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Hana, played by Grey’s Anatomy’s Midori Francis, struggles with binge eating and tracks her calories with hawk-like attention in her desperation to be thin. When she bumps into a friend who has recently lost a lot of weight, Hana learns about the weight-loss fad of eating human ashes.
After the first set of pills works for her, Hana turns to synthesize her own batch, using the human cadaver of an oversized woman from her medical class that the students have dubbed “Big Bertha,” leading to terrifying results.
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Hana is haunted by the poltergeist of “Big Bertha” and hallucinates sickly-sweet desserts as she gradually loses her grip on reality and self-image. The film builds its horror through the slow, creeping realization that the pursuit of a “perfect” physique can become all-consuming.
The movie is being promoted by Independent Film Company and Shudder as a “timely take on toxic messaging about weight and appearance that permeates every corner of our culture.”
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Even the movie’s poster, featuring the shadow of a person in front of an open, stacked refrigerator, with the words “What’s eating you?” at the top, mirrors the real-world anxieties of someone terrified of losing the weight-loss battle.
The film seemingly exaggerates this reality just enough, presenting a scenario where the desire to be thin at any cost, financial, physical, or psychological, traps Hana in a prison of her own making.
Saccharine comes amid raging criticism over Hollywood celebrities’ thinner appearances
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Saccharine will be released at a time when the conversation around weight loss and the subsequent criticism of the trend have reached an all-time high.
Multiple celebrities and influencers have been called out online for their super-lean looks during photoshoots and red-carpet appearances. Some were even accused of using GLP-1 injections meant for appetite suppression and obesity management in diabetic patients.
During the recently concluded award season, actresses like Emma Stone, Anne Hathaway, Nicole Kidman, and Anya Taylor-Joy faced similar allegations.
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Demi Moore received significant backlash for her skinny appearance in multiple red carpet photos, including her Actor Awards look in a strapless black Schiaparelli gown. She famously starred in the 2024 body-horror movie Substance, where she played Elisabeth Sparkle, a celebrity who uses a black-market substance to create a younger version of herself, Sue (Margaret Qualley).
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“Good grief, is all of Hollywood on Oz*mpic?” a user said about her look.
Kelly Osbourne, another celebrity who was slammed for her looks, has been open about her weight-loss journey over the years. She underwent gastric sleeve surgery in 2018 to lose around 85 lbs, but denied taking weight-loss injections after recent allegations surfaced.
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Ariana Grande sparked widespread concerns about her health during the Wicked: For Good press tour as fans noticed she looked “bony” and “hollowed out.” Her co-actresses, Cynthia Erivo and Michelle Yeoh, also faced similar comments about their bodies.
Saccharine is a “love letter” to people who struggled with body image
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Director Natalie Erika James, 36, described the film as a “love letter to anyone who has grown up wishing their body was different, to anyone who has felt imprisoned by self-destructive impulses, to my family and the hidden pain we carried, and to myself.”
“Shame can often drive self-destruction, but bringing compassion, acceptance, and light to your darkness is the only way its power dissolves. As Hana learns most brutally, healing and recovery are not places we arrive at, but an ongoing path.”
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True to James’ promise, Saccharine, which was selected for the Berlin and Sundance Film Festivals, attempts to turn the familiar social pressure to be thin into something far more disturbing, according to those who attended the screenings.
“The body horror here largely stems from body dysmorphia, with Francis donning a fat suit in the early stretches as Hana succumbs to gross yet s*xual bursts of gluttony, striking imagery of a quiet woman driven by insatiable need, followed by psychological torment of the self-inflicted guilt variety,” film reviewer Meagan Navarro wrote on Bloody Disgusting.
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David Rooney pointed out in The Hollywood Reporter that Hana being suggested as “fat” and needing to lose weight might seem unbelievable, as she looks like a “normal-sized young woman by non-Hollywood standards, even with some prosthetic enhancement.”
“But perhaps that’s part of James’ point — that body expectations for women are so unrealistic that many, like Hana, are driven to starvation and self-loathing.”
“Not for the faint of heart, but this midnight crowd ate every minute up (bad pun),” said an audience member on social media.
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However, the movie also received some negative reviews, with some calling out a lack of focus in the latter half and others criticizing its treatment of fatness.
“You ever think about how fat women are afforded no dignity? Not even in de*th? Yeah, me neither,” one person wrote on Letterboxd, referencing “Big Bertha.”
“This movie is a dangerously dense and fragile representation of disordered eating,” said another.
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“It got quite fat-phobic, and the glorification of being skinny was never resolved,” wrote a third. A fourth said, “Literally fatphobic — the scariest thing here is a fat woman?”
Saccharine will open in theaters on May 22.
“Nightmare fuel.” The internet reacted to the trailer of Natalie Erika James’ body-horror, Saccharine
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