Saccharine
There is a saying, “a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips,” Hana a diligent and driven medical student who knows the truth only too well, her once-handsome father Travis now diabetic and morbidly obese, hiding himself away in darkness and shame, her mother Kimie obsessed with cleaning the house in an effort to hold onto control of her life and present a front of happy normality, while Hana’s stress exhibits in her own bad relationship with food.
A trainer at her gym whom Hana has a crush on asking her to participate in a twelve- week exercise challenge to lose weight, a chance encounter with a former schoolfriend, now almost unrecognisable from her former heavy self, suggests advantage through a new drug, expensive and not yet approved, Hana’s research background prompting her to analyse and attempt to synthesise her own version, the results immediate but the side effects horrifying.
A dubious dietary supplement aimed at the same demographic as The Substance and Thinestra written and directed by Relic’s Natalie Erika James, Saccharine hides toxic bitterness beneath an apparently sweet surface, Hana (Unseen’s Midori Francis) capable and intelligent but her own worst enemy, desperate to prove herself and drowning in toxic “body positive” messages which blur the line between affirmation and actively pursuing ill- health while hating her own self-image.
The pressure to succeed academically and conform to media standards of beauty not helped by her background or the obese cancer-ridden corpse she is dissecting, maliciously named “Bertha” by a fellow student, while her friend Josie and trainer Alanya (Danielle Macdonald and Madeleine Madden) are at first encouraging, the continued dramatic weight loss causes alarm, only Hana knowing the truth, that she is haunted by a monstrous image seen only in distorted reflections, bloated, demanding and ever-hungry.
A female-led horror of gross anatomy, uneasy transformations, peer pressure and terrible choices which recalls The Ugly Stepsister, Hana is aware of the ethical line she is crossing when sourcing materials while rolling her eyes when Kimie (Showko Showfukutei) asks that her daughter tend the family shrine to ward off hungry ghosts when she is away, but even in its most grim moments of slicing decayed or fresh flesh Saccharine never forgets that beneath the skin all the characters are human, flawed but trying to improve themselves.
Hana beholden to her unresolved feelings of inadequacy, seeing her need as a bottomless pit, a disappointment to her parents as much as they were a disappointment to her, a curse passed down through generations as powerful as the one she has now brought on herself, a taste of Saccharine is not recommended as a healthy weight loss programme but as another pillar in the expanding pantheon of feminist horror, crafted and performed by women and informed by their experiences, it deserves recognition and validation.
Saccharine will be streaming on Shudder from Friday 24th July
