Saccharine (2026) Review – Weight Loss Body-Horror Needs to Trim Down

Welcome to Knockout Horror and to our review of the Aussie body-horror movie Saccharine (2026). You can find this film on Shudder right now.

Body Horror Is In Bloom

Body horror feels like it has been around forever. While the genre didn’t properly coalesce until the 1970s, specifically the beginning of David Cronenberg’s reign of terror, its origins could, perhaps, be traced all the way back to the surrealist, experimental movies of the late 1920s.

“If Shivers was one of the most important films in body-horror’s advent, then The Substance is equally important in the genre’s recent re-birth.”

I always look at the surgical procedures depicted in Luis Buñuel’s Un chien andalou as a pivotal moment in the movement’s birth. Filmmakers recognised that capturing the corruption of the human body in intimate detail could shock even the toughest of Avant-garde audiences.

If you want to go back to the first movie to define the genre’s rules, Cronenberg’s Shivers absolutely needs to be mentioned. Ever since then, body-horror has always been there. Sure, it’s had its ups and downs but there was always a fairly steady stream of new movies all aiming to shock viewers through gruesome depictions of bodily violation.

If Shivers was one of the most important films in body-horror’s advent, then The Substance is equally important in the genre’s recent re-birth. Again, it never went anywhere but it could be argued that, thanks to the aforementioned film, we are in the midst of a body-horror popularity wave the likes of which we haven’t ever seen.

A new perspective

The fantastic thing about this new wave of body-horror popularity is the fact that it is being led by female filmmakers. It’s incredibly exciting because this new perspective has shifted the genre from gross-out corruption of the flesh to matters of real significance.

Directors like Coralie Fargeat, Carlo Mirabella-Davis, Julia Ducournau, and Emilie Blichfeldt are turning the focus away from male anxiety and directly at matters of aging, societal expectation, beauty standards, and bodily ownership.

A name that sometimes doesn’t get included in that list of pioneering female body-horror directors is the person who is responsible for the movie we are looking at today – Natalie Erika James.

James brought us Relic back in 2020, a movie which intimately explored the impact of age related disease on both the body and the mind.

With Saccharine, she is exploring something that is equally as impactful to people, perhaps even more so – weight gain and the societal expectations that come along with being a woman.

The story follows med student Hanna (Midori Francis) as she attempts to overcome a binge-eating disorder by taking part in a new diet fad – tablets filled with human ashes. Although everything seems great at first, she quickly begins to question her decision as a sinister presence begins to haunt her.

It’s a great concept

Unfortunately, all of the above seems like a grand introduction to a movie that is going to clearly establish its place alongside the recent greats of the body-horror genre like The Substance, The Ugly Stepsister, Raw, and Titane. The truth is, Saccharine is a bit of a disappointment. It’s a shame because the concept is great.

New ideas are hard to come by in horror but Saccharine’s focus on weight and diet fads feels pretty fresh. Weight gain is a problem a large percentage of the population experience and it is bound to be relatable for many. The very specific way James has chosen to portray Hanna’s condition also feels quite unique.

She’s not just a constant eater, she is suffering from binge-eating disorder. She wants to lose weight and she engages with eating plans and rigorous exercise. It all comes undone, however, when she is unable to fight off the enormous compulsion to eat vast quantities of food.

This is a very real thing for many people and the way Hanna is depicted as being so utterly dominated by these impulses feels respectful and accurate. When an easy out is offered to her in the form of a diet pill, she jumps on it, little realising the consequences.

It starts off promising

There’s lots of promise here. James’s direction is strong early on and she has a keen eye for an engaging shot. This is a gorgeous film and it feels higher budget than it likely is. The cracks only really show when it comes to some of the fat suits. One in particular looks terrible.

“Around the halfway mark, however, it all starts to go downhill. I can’t put my finger on when I stopped enjoying it but I can sure as hell put my finger on why.”

The body-horror is restrained but works well. Some of the eating scenes are going to be a nightmare for misophonia sufferers (myself included) but they serve to highlight the disparity between Hanna’s normal resolve and the avarice that comes when her disorder takes over.

She’s in pure heaven when she eats but utterly ashamed afterwards and James affords the viewer a great opportunity to share in that feeling. I really enjoyed Midori Francis in the movie Unseen and she does a nice job here for at least half of Saccharine’s runtime.

Hanna is an atypical horror protagonist and quite likeable; she feels quite refreshing in a lot of ways. James actually manages some decent scares, too. Some of Hanna’s first encounters with the entity that is haunting her are pretty effective, though I did feel they were very reminiscent of fellow Australian horror movie Talk to Me.

Around the halfway mark, however, it all starts to go downhill. I can’t put my finger on when I stopped enjoying it but I can sure as hell put my finger on why. Saccharine suddenly slips into a pattern of heavy repetition with diminished returns and that’s when the movie’s problems start to become more apparent.

Until it gets very repetitive

This is a very long movie clocking in at nearly two hours and, looking back on it, the entire first half needs to be cut down significantly. There’s far too much establishing of Hanna’s eating disorder and far too little story progression. By the time things actually start heating up, it becomes clear that James is struggling for ideas.

The entity here is used as a visual representation of the compulsion to binge but it feels extremely heavy handed; even more so than the heavy handedness of Relic’s metaphors. The film settles into a pattern of Hanna realising the entity is there with her and looking shocked as if it is the first time it has happened.

“Certain elements aren’t explained; the viewers is left to fill in blanks, and random plot points seem to evaporate into the ether.”

It repeats over and over; this repetition gets old and it gets old fast. In fact, this sequence is repeated throughout the second half of the film with no meaningful evolution beyond Hanna working out the reason why it is happening. It feels enormously padded and the horror sequences lose their weight quicker than Hanna does when she starts popping those pills.

Lots of issues that really add up

When you start to notice this repetition, the movie’s other little issues start to become a lot more apparent. The writing is, at times, shocking with some of the dialogue coming across as enormously clumsy. That clumsiness also occasionally extends to the plot and the handling of eating disorders.

Closeup shots of Hanna eating are massively overused to inspire a sense of disgust. There’s also a single shot focusing on Hanna’s eyes as the entity takes over that is whipped out with reckless abandon. Again, these are more examples of James dialing back her very obvious directorial talent to, instead, please a crowd expecting horror.

Midori Francis gets worse as the movie goes on. She speaks with a full blown American accent that’s never explained away which just seems lazy, to be honest. She defaults to a very limited range of expressions, too, and seems out of her depth when the action picks up later on.

The narrative sinks into farce during the last third of the film. Certain elements aren’t explained; the viewers is left to fill in blanks, and random plot points seem to evaporate into the ether. The focus is switched squarely to making the viewer chuckle and subverting their expectation about what is to come in the final twenty minutes.

Those final minutes are a trip, too. It’s almost as if James is trying to blend some of that powerful storytelling from Relic’s finale with some utterly ludicrous, Ketamine-powered, Coralie Fargeat-esque, b-movie ridiculousness but it really doesn’t work. Saccharine’s bizarre, late in the day twist towards the camp and comedic feels forced and out of place. That ending is going to split viewers, too.

It’s a shame because, trimmed down immensely and tightened up, this could have been a fantastic film. As it stands, it just feels a bit messy and unsatisfying. There’s so much promise but, for me, it never really comes together.

Our Scoring Philosophy: A Fair Fight

Horror is a genre that thrives thanks to indie film makers and low budget creators. At Knockout Horror, we firmly believe that every movie that we review deserves a fair fight. That's why we grade on a curve. Our star ratings are all about context, judging a film on what it achieves with the resources it has.

A 4-star rating for a scrappy indie horror made for $10,000 is a testament to its ingenuity and raw power. A 4-star rating for a $100 million blockbuster means it delivered on its epic promises. We don't compare them side-by-side; we celebrate success in every weight class, from the back-alley brawler to the heavyweight champion. Please keep this in mind when considering star ratings.