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.