52 Films by Women Vol 10. 1. SACCHARINE (Director: Natalie Erika James)

 

Pictured: Taking a weight loss drug with an unexpected chemical composition, Hana (Midori Francis) starts noticing shapes in convex mirrors in a scheme from Japanese Australian writer-director Natalie Erika James' body horror, Saccharine. Still courtesy of Berlinale.

Saccharine, Japanese Australian writer-director Natalie Erika James’ third feature, is all gut no punch. Horrifying in aspiration rather than effect, it recalls such movies as The Substance, The Whale and the 1984 Ghostbusters – the latter for the hungry spectral presence. The film takes a sideways look at the effect of niche weight-loss drugs. What if a pill could make you lose weight while also allowing you to gorge yourself mental on junk food? More specifically, what if your hunger was driven to fill the belly of a malign spirit who gets larger while you get thinner?

James’ protagonist is Japanese American Hana (Midori Francis), a medical student with weight and self-esteem issues. She wants to sign up for a twelve week get-fit course run by super-svelte Alanya (Madeleine Madden) but doubts her own suitability. Checking out Alanya, best friend Josie (Danielle Macdonald) questions Hana’s motifs. ‘Do you want to be with her or be her?’ Hana doesn’t answer but we suspect both. In my experience, friendship is about acquiring the desirable personality traits of the best friend, then leaving them for dust. In Hana’s case, its ash.

Hana’s ‘gateway drug’ (as it were) is provided by former schoolfriend, Melissa (Annie Shapero), who has lost a shit tonne of weight since she and Hana tackled algebra. She invites Hana to try a pill that will produce fantastic results instantly. Hana prevaricates. There’s no gain without pain but then decides to grab the pill and swallow before rationalising its effect. Melissa gives her a second pill by way of follow-up dose. You wonder by the way she pushes the drug whether she is a brand ambassador or influencer. ‘I look great, right?’ she declares.

Hana is impressed. Aiming for the goal weight of 60 kg from a starting point 20kg higher, she registers an immediate loss. However, the cost of the drug is 5,000 Australian dollars. Hana doesn’t have that kind of cash. Being a hardworking medical student, albeit one with a careless touch with a scalpel in autopsy club – first rule of autopsy club, don’t wear the same nail polish as one of your cadavers - she decides to analyse the chemical compound of the second pill. There she makes the discovery that its contents are basically human ash. Fortunately, Hana has access to the body parts of the recently deceased. Once you remove part of a rib cage and dispose of it in a blue plastic bag, there’s no process to stop anyone retrieving it, sticking it in a pizza oven (or medical equivalent) and scoring your own supply. Hana conducts her own clinical trial – sample size, one – and takes the substance, sorry, pill. The effect is the same, except for one teeny tiny difference. Hana starts seeing a spectral grey presence in the reflection of convex mirrors, that is, in spoons.

If she was just seeing a grey naked figure in the back of her kitchen, Hana could probably cope. It is just a glitch in one’s eye. Several times, James shows one of Hana’s eyes looking at 90 degrees to the other, then clicking back with a hard sound effect. I never got used to it. The spectre Bertha (recently deceased and examined by Hana’s class) can also throw objects around the room. In one memorable scene, while Hana is sitting on the floor, a shopping bag tips over and an item of junk food slides towards her. Hana snatches and devours it. Then another item is fired towards her, then a third and fourth. The viewer may wonder, if a malign spirit can move food items – donuts and such – why won’t it just feed itself? Why does it need a human avatar? What is its end game?

After looking chronically unfit – Hana gurns during her spin class – the kilos drop from her body. Whether by make-up, convex lenses, digital effects or a genuine transformation, Francis (the actress) genuinely looks like she has lost 20 kilos. We can take a lesson from this. Nab the lead role in an Aussie body horror and say goodbye to puppy fat. It does help us buy into the story, though when Hana continues to lose weight, reaching 45kg, the performer and director don’t show it.

Alayna is initially pleased by Hana’s progress, but when Hana meets her target, she is horrified, taking her to one side and giving her the whole ‘duty of care’ speech. But isn’t this what she wanted from her test subjects, pleads Hana, before leaving the class.

There is a subplot involving Hana’s Japanese mother, Kimie (Showko Showfukutei) taking a trip, possibly to Argentina if a brochure left in her house is anything to go by, leaving Hana to care for her father and change the offerings left on a shrine to the dead in Kimie’s home. There is a security camera in the kitchen, but we aren’t sure of its purpose. Hana’s Australian father, Travis (Robert Taylor) sits in the front room in shadow, watching the TV. James purposefully does not show him, until very late in the film, in a scene that asks us to reframe Hana’s body image obsession. Taylor is presented as chronically obese, recalling Brendan Fraser in The Whale. The film sails close to body shaming. ‘You left us a long time ago,’ Hana declares, as if weight gain represented a retreat from life. Actually, we come to like Travis. He made Hana pancakes for breakfast.

Hana eventually returns to class and engages in make-up sex with Alayna. However, one unwelcome aspect of her behaviour surfaces. At Alayna’s apartment, Hana sleep eats, making a mess of the kitchen. Alayna’s flatmate appears and is aghast, prompting Hana to flee in shame.

Up until this point, we read the bizarre goings on as a manifestation of a self-induced sugar rush. Of course, that window isn’t broken and Bertha, who shares her name with Mrs Rochester’s imprisoned wife in Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Jane Eyre’, isn’t floating above Hana, expanding, so that Bertha’s eye touches Hana’s eye. Hana obviously causes all the damage herself. In a scene with Josie in the university library, this changes. Suddenly items are thrown everywhere, witnessed by Josie. When one person witnesses a malevolent spirit, you’ve got a problem. When two unrelated people see it, you have a situation.

One of the other side effects of the ash pill, which Hana eventually stops taking, all too late, is that she is found to have a benign tumour. Bertha had a similar growth, discovered during the autopsy, which appears to last as long as Alayna’s twelve-week class.  Hana reasons that if she can remove her own growth, she will sever her link to Bertha. They won’t have anything in common.

The finale involves an after-hours trip to the lab with Josie, Hana locking herself in a secure room using a stolen pass, in turn sealed in a time-locked cage – a gadget shown early on, used for denying someone their mobile phone for an agreed period so that they’ll actually have to talk to people face to face. The film takes a surreal turn involving a garbage chute. In the film’s coda, a painting of a partially skinned and deboned female body is recreated, though James uses three cuts where one will do.

Pictured: The afore-mentioned surreal visit to a garbage chute. Hana (Midori Francis) fears what's coming in Japanese Australian writer-director Natalie Erika James' body horror film, Saccharine. Still courtesy of Berlinale.

The screening was marred by partially inaudible dialogue, the sound system at das Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin unable to cope with James’ mix. The film opens with reversed shots of jam leaking out of a donut as it is being eaten (so the jam looks like it is returning to the confection) as well as all manner of sugar treats which, to this reviewer, have never looked so unappealing. By the end, I resolved never to so much as glance at a Krispy Kreme. Whether using actual influencer footage or creating it, James shows us the ‘mashed potato challenge’, with skinny women being able to slip their arms in the gap between the handle and the mesh of a potato masher. Another video shows us the correct use of this kitchen implement. James substitutes jump scares for close-ups of doughy snacks being consumed, leaky fillings suggesting deadly quicksand. There are few men in the movie, only the token male medical student and Hana’s dad. Much of James’ previous work has focused on parents and their children, complete with malevolent spirits. Saccharine looks at coupling. However, it is unsatisfying. Some folks aren’t ready for relationships. Saccharine suggests that James is not ready to direct relationship movies. 

Reviewed at Berlinale 2026 (the one without the politics), Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany, Thursday 19 February 2026, 22:00 screening