Notable Cast: Midori Francis, Danielle Macdonald,
Madeleine Madden, Robert Taylor, Showko Showfukutei, Octavia Barron-Martin,
Anna Adams
Director and writer Natalie Erika James tackled many intriguing narrative elements from a female perspective in her first two films. With Relic, she tackled what it looks like to have a “disease” within your family and how it works on women in its multi-generational character studies, and she even managed to squeeze out some intriguingly strong sequences when tasked with remaking- sorry, I mean crafting a prequel to Rosemary’s Baby in Apartment 7A.
The latter was more mundane than the former's intensely interwoven social
commentary and haunted house narrative, but the American-Australian filmmaker
has a style that uses distinctive perspectives to dig into women's social and
internal plights while still delivering horror movie frights. It’s a one-two
jab and uppercut that can work impressively when it’s moving cohesively. Her
third feature film, Saccharine, aims for the same balance, particularly
feeling like a more proper follow-up to Relic than Apartment 7A, and the
results are, unfortunately, perhaps more mixed than one would have hoped
for.
Saccharine does earn some credit, though, because it
touches on fascinating aspects of its narrative throughout, even if its
messaging gets muddled. Like both previous films, James - who serves as the
writer and director - wants all of the horror and plotting choices to mean
something, and she absolutely tries to make that work.
Hana, a young woman in medical school, has to cope with her
own personal anxieties - particularly when it comes to her weight - while
trying to balance the stressors of school and the social expectations of a
young woman. On her journey, she encounters a weight-loss solution. A pill,
which just happens to contain human ashes, allows her to melt the weight away
without changing her eating habits. So, since she’s in medical school and
working on cadavers, she decides to make her own pills with parts of her class's
corpse. Unfortunately, while she does lose weight, the cadaver's ghost enters
her life, and its intentions are certainly not in keeping with Hana being happy
and healthy.
If there’s perhaps a larger theme that threads its way
through Saccharine, it has to be consumption. Hana eats to cope. She
starts eating human remains - in the form of ash, if that makes it better (?)
- to address her feelings and body dysmorphia, and suddenly the
malevolent spirit of this person seemingly wants her to keep consuming, or it
will consume her. What consumes her (her anxiety and trauma) forces her to
consume. This malevolent spirit only arrives if she isn’t gorging herself on
food, for example. Because Hana doesn’t address it properly, the cycle
continues and only gets more dangerous as the story plays out.
On that level, the film seemingly has an intriguing angle
and certainly a strong take. James is a writer-director with an auteur focus,
and it’s very present here. Unfortunately, many of the film’s character and
plot details don’t always seem to align with it, or feel meekly tied to it. Her
brief interactions with her parents feel like they're supposed to give her a
reason for her anxiety and trauma, but the film doesn’t spend a lot of time
with them to flesh it out; for example, the film very much seems to paint so
much of her social anxiety around her weight as solely in her head. Her crush
at the gym takes notice of her due to her weight loss, perhaps, but even that
romantic relationship seems “saccharine,” to steal the title, and more in line
with her overreliance on sugar to soothe her mental distress. The images it's
painting and the messages it wants to tell its audience don’t always align, and
it just doesn’t feel as poignant as it might have. Particularly as it starts to
weave in more information about the mean old ghost that seemingly wants to
consume her.
By the end, the film has to try and solve its horror plot,
and that really feels like it doesn’t quite know how to get its messages
across. Hana is forced to face the ghost, make the “right decision,” and fix
her choices, but that feels loosely tied to the themes at best, and then it
adds a second ending after the climax that seems to complicate things further.
Perhaps with more time to digest (pun fully intended), I might feel a bit
different about its ending, as it has some intriguing tie-backs to visuals and
ideas from the beginning, but it still feels a bit tacked on.
However, while its overall narrative and subtext might be
muddled, Saccharine still delivers some impressive execution that's
worth noting.
That starts with its star, Midori Francis, who anchors the film admirably throughout. Francis digs in for the role of Hana and gets a lot of work with her, as the narrative gives her a relatively strong character arc to work through as she is faced with a demonic ghostly presence that forces her to reckon with her choices, make decisions, and either succumb to her ‘demons’ or push forward to save herself. Francis is absolutely committed to the role, whether it's bigger onscreen moments like seeing her chug Slurpee straight out of the machine in a panic (the brain freeze in real life must have been brutal) or the subtle work of emotionally navigating a blooming relationship she starts to have with a gym trainer who has taken an interest in her.
To be fair, if you’re just looking for an effective little
haunting horror movie, then Saccharine does hit the marks nicely. It
borrows elements of It Follows, particularly in how slow-moving the
apparition is as it chases Hana, and the film manages to insert some serious
creepy tension and big scare moments. Using its own aspects of developed movie
lore, particularly in how this ghost can only be seen in curved mirror surfaces
(like bowls, spoons, kettles, - oh shit, it's mostly kitchen utensils, you sly
movie), director James builds quite a bit of tension throughout that is quite
effective.
It features solid special effects, including footprints and
moving items in the classic ghost-scare way, but it also throws in fun elements
of body horror, gore, and surrealism in the third act. A wandering eye that
seems to plague Hana once she starts to become haunted and plays out for a
great creep factor, and Chekhov’s surgical knife from medical school definitely
highlight some of the better horror aspects. However, when the film fully dives
into surreal imagery for its finale, it finds the best way to blend its
narrative commentary into the horror. Granted, there’s a plot reason for it,
but its successful use of the dream-like elements made me wish that they would
have been used more throughout, even if the style of the film occasionally
touches on it through montages or how it fetishizes aspects of Hana’s world -
like its opening scene that bounces an edit between slow motion and
hyper-intense close-ups of Hana eating a donut and her crush at the gym working
out.
For James, as a director and writer, Saccharine is
another fascinating addition to her filmography, mostly because it defines her auteur style in themes and style, particularly after a foray
into franchise territory. The film’s ultimately muddled themes and messages
undercut some of its strong horror elements, but it's hard not to give it some
benefit of the doubt because of its riskier choices and some great moments. Its
impressive lead performance and its style certainly warrant a watch for horror
fans, and it garners a recommendation.
James continues to prove to be one of the most interesting voices in horror
right now, and Saccharine might feel like some of its substance has been
replaced by sugary gratification of horror aspects, but there’s plenty of
nutritious aspects to consume here…and, quite frankly, it’s just the right
balance to make me want to keep consuming more of what she has to cook
up.
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