Much like her 2020 debut Relic, Natalie Erika James knows how to create good horror that doesn’t feel like a generic genre film. Rarely do her movies stumble into excessive clichés or annoying jump scares, instead using horror elements to amplify the core traumas impacting her characters’ lives. In Saccharine’s case, the theme isn’t so much “You are what you eat,” but rather our obsession with beauty standards and the unintended, even paranormal, side effects of achieving the perfect fit.

Losing weight is Hana’s (Midori Francis) ultimate goal. A medical student learning anatomy from donated corpses in class, Hana divides her time between studying, spending time at the gym, and struggling not to eat junk food on the side. She even considers a 12-week weight-loss course with the attractive trainer Alanya (Madeleine Madden), despite viewing her chances of getting thinner or hooking up as equally slim. So, when an old schoolmate shows up looking exceptionally thin, Hana is skeptical of the pills Melissa (Anna Adams) reportedly took to achieve that bombshell physique.

A closer examination of the pills reveals their core ingredient to be human ash, yet their desired effect, however unethical, intrigues her. By grinding pieces of her class-assigned corpse (nicknamed Bertha) into a consumable powder, Hana begins to gradually achieve the desired result. Yet over time, Hana notices something is wrong. A specter of Bertha starts haunting her at home, only viewable through reflections but growing stronger the more weight she loses. At first, the entity only stalks her from afar, but soon it begins stirring up more chaos inside her apartment, only receding when, ironically enough, Hana succumbs to overeating all over again.

James fully commits to the internal logic of her monster. In multiple scenes, Hana, ever the scientist, documents the supernatural occurrences and figures out how to keep Bertha at bay, even if a part of her doesn’t really want to stop the weight-loss process. Impressively, many of the scares are depicted through classic fear-of-the-unknown tricks that deliberately refrain from showing too much of Bertha. Instead, James utilizes unexpected door creaks, fridge sounds, and startling food projectiles to indicate something otherworldly is in the room and slowly becoming stronger. It’s adept suspense horror that feels like an extension of wellness culture’s disturbing undertones—embracing sketchy treatments that manipulate real fears about one’s body image for a high cost.

Even the way Saccharine treats mundane activity surrounding this weight-loss culture amplifies a sense of unease. Rarely is food portrayed in a pleasant manner. Instead, what culinary options we see, from leftover dinner to a lopsided cake, feel rotten and ugly, as if the sight of them should come with red flags. As a result, whenever Hana succumbs to her worst urges, the cinematography seems destined to terrify the viewer with the side effect of making us gag.

However, other parts of Saccharine can’t help but feel underdeveloped. The story never quite figures out what to do with Hana’s friend Josie (Danielle Macdonald), moving her in and out of early scenes before setting her up as the one person Hana needs to convince about what’s going on. Likewise, scenes with her mother could have used a few extra interactions to better establish their dysfunction. Because not enough time is devoted to Hana’s relationships with the people in her life, the supernatural corpse plaguing her ironically has more dimension as a character.

Despite some rough edges around the script, there’s enough disturbing imagery here, as well as surprisingly good cases of foreshadowing, to impress the horror movie crowd. In particular, one shot of Hana looking at an uncanny painting of human anatomy pays off in quite an unexpected reveal, demonstrating James’s knack for setting up horror breadcrumbs. You probably won’t lose your lunch watching Saccharine, but you might just get uncomfortable looking at your next meal.