Editor’s Note: Freeline Media critic Mike Fried insists that when it comes to movies, he always has good taste. But that may not be true of the filmmakers! Check out Mike’s review of the body horror of Saccharine.
By MIKE FRIED
SACCHARINE
3/5
An overweight medical student thinks she is being terrorized by an evil presence after she takes part in the latest weight loss craze, taking a pill called “Grey” that is made from human ashes.
What makes this movie work is the committed performance from Midori Francis as Hana, the medical student. She plays Hana as a tortured soul. She quickly throws out food in the garbage chute so as to prevent a food relapse. And she’s smart. She analyzes the pill content on her own, figuring out that it is human ash.
But does she stop? Nope. So maybe she’s not as smart as she would lead us to believe. And she creates her own pills from the cremated remains of cadaver she is dissecting, dubbed “Bertha.” And it’s Bertha that she is seeing. But the pills are not preventing her food addiction. She is continuing to eat as she was before.
It helps that Midori is skinny and her overweight visage is due to a fat suit — much like Robert John Burke in Thinner — so she can sell the weight loss effect. She gives an extraordinary performance. In one of the reviews it said that the fat suit was distracting. First off, I didn’t think so. Second, how else do you sell the weight loss effect?
The movie has a lot to say about body dysmorphia. It’s no coincidence that Hana’s stomach rumbling precedes the appearance of Bertha and that when this happens, Hana wakes up amidst food that she has eaten but does not remember eating. Also, the more calories she eats, the more weight she loses.
There is a great sense of humor in the film, mostly owing to the performance of Danielle McDonald as Hana’s friend and fellow medical student, Josie. She is the voice of reason; but then she sees the light when weird things happen in her presence.
Directed by Natalie Erika James, whose Relic was a good film (her Apartment 7A not so much), the film works but it is probably about 20 minutes too long and that affects the pacing. When I think that The Odyssey is only an hour longer than this film but seems shorter, I am pretty sure I am correct in my opinion. There are also some imponderables, such as how does Hana drink oven cleaner to keep Bertha at bay but did not die.
I did not find the body horror to be excessive — and I get squeamish about it so I would tell you; but there is a fairly explicit scene near the end but it does look like a prop. I thought some of the food eating scenes were more disgusting to be honest. And that’s coming from a fat guy.
Nevertheless the last 20 minutes of the film are outstanding.
I just wish we got there quicker.
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@gmail.com
