PLOT: A young woman (Midori Francis) who is desperate to lose weight is given access to a new wonder drug called “The Gray,” which allows her to lose weight—fast—but the consequences prove to be more dire than she anticipates.
REVIEW: We live in an interesting era. A lot of people struggle with their weight (most of us do at one point or another), but now there seem to be pharmaceutical solutions that are helping people lose weight and keep it off, upending diet culture in a real way. Natalie Erika James, who previously helmed the well-received Relic (as well as the misbegotten Rosemary’s Baby prequel Apartment 7A), takes on this new reality head-on with this intriguing new entry into the resurgent body-horror genre.
Our heroine, Midori Francis’s Hana, suffers from severe body dysmorphia. While a more extreme version of this film would have presented her as significantly overweight, Hana starts the movie looking like a pretty average person, although Francis does wear prosthetics that are never quite convincing. Yet she has some family trauma that’s made her fear her growing weight, plus she’s also lusting over a fit grad student, Madeleine Madden’s Alanya, who she feels will never notice her unless she’s rail-thin.
One night, when clubbing with her much more body-positive friend Josie (a likable Danielle Macdonald), she runs into a girl she knew in high school who was once obese but now looks like a model. She’s given some pills called “The Gray,” which she’s told will help her lose weight—although they cost upwards of $5K. Yet Hana also happens to be a med student, and she’s able to synthesize the drug herself, only to discover it contains human ash, prompting her to steal some from an obese cadaver she and her fellow grads have cruelly named Big Bertha. Soon Hana starts losing loads of weight, but also finds herself haunted by Bertha’s increasingly pissed-off ghost—or is she?
Natalie Erika James tackles a lot here—from body dysmorphia to LGBTQ romance to body horror, with a ghost story thrown in too for good measure—but it mostly works. While a little too deliberately paced at close to two hours (there’s a smashing ninety-minute movie in there), Saccharine is always compelling, with some pretty gross gore effects thrown in for good measure. It will also strike a chord with anyone who’s ever wished they could take a shortcut and get the body of their dreams—even as getting the kind you see in movies is ultimately unattainable for a lot of us.
Midori Francis, who was a regular on Grey’s Anatomy, delivers a standout performance as the vulnerable Hana, with whom you always empathize, even if it’s a little hard to swallow that this med student would violate so many ethical lines without ever being caught. She keeps you invested in Hana’s journey, with James also keeping the horror vague enough that for much of it you never know whether the horror is real or just in Hana’s head.
While it’s not The Substance, and isn’t as much of a knockout as another great Sundance body-horror flick from last year, The Ugly Stepsister, Saccharine is always stylish and compelling. It will make its debut on Shudder later this year and seems bound to be one of the streamer’s buzzier titles, with the film received warmly here in Park City. It’s one to keep an eye out for.
