Why ‘Saccharine’ Director Natalie Erika James Made a Horror Film About Disordered Eating: ‘Weight Stigma Permeates Every Facet of Our Culture’

Natalie Erika James‘ new film “Saccharine” opens with a shot of a jelly donut getting devoured, and then the footage is spun in reverse, with the bloody-looking goo getting sucked back into the donut. It’s an intentionally disorienting start to James’ new horror film, which is an examination of diet culture.

“My aim with the film was to sit the audience within the subjective experience of someone going through disordered eating and a disordered relationship to food,” says writer-director James. “It really swings from that grotesqueness of feeling like it’s too much but not enough, that endless kind of hunger. I wanted to convey that through really visceral shots of food. But it also swings to a glossy, dopamine-fueled space visually as well. Conveying both sides of that was really important.”

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“Saccharine,” which is opening on Thursday as part of Sundance’s Midnight section and was acquired by Independent Film Company and Shudder right before the festival, is a horror film that is frightening and provocative in equal measure. The plot concerns a med student named Hana (Midori Francis) who finds out that eating human ash is a shortcut to weight loss. Unfortunately, it also conjures the ghost of the person whose corpse was used for this diet hack.

James, whose previous films were the acclaimed 2020 family horror movie “Relic” and the 2024 “Rosemary’s Baby” prequel “Apartment 7A,” says the idea for “Saccharine” came from a personal place.

“I grew up with parents who sat on opposite sides of the spectrum in terms of how they relate to their bodies and their relationship to food and eating,” she says. “On one hand, my dad really struggled with food addiction. My mom, almost in response to that, was extremely strict with her diet and very health-conscious. In the midst of that, it feels like meal times are a minefield. I grew up with a lot of warped ideas about body image, as so many of us do. It’s taken a long time to unpack those, and the idea came from that recovery process.”

While many artists might not have been able to conceptualize telling Hana’s story through the lens of horror, James says it allows her a malleable canvas for heavy ideas.

“I’m drawn to the fear of something dark within ourselves, the shadow self,” she says. “That’s the common thread I’ve found through a lot of my writing. It’s a way to excavate the dark recesses of your heart, or the fears and anxieties that live there. There’s such a freedom in the way you can use horror. It’s very freeing to use surreal imagery and externalize what’s internal through horror.”

The lush look of “Saccharine,” which James visualized alongside cinematographer Charlie Sarroff, drew upon unexpected sources.

“We had both ‘candy’ and ‘grime’ as thematic,” she says. “Those pops of color, that slightly neo-noir wash of neons and slightly-stylized lighting, but also keeping the real darkness and grittiness as well. We were even drawing on older Wong Kar-wai films — just for inspiration, obviously not completely imitating them — but going for palettes that paint Hana’s inner world.”

Ultimately, James hopes that, along with delivering scares, “Saccharine” sparks thought and discussion about society’s complex relationship with food and weight.

“The most worthwhile thing in making a film is to hopefully convey an experience that makes people feel seen, see a part of themselves on screen, and make them feel less alone,” she says. “I’m sure there’ll be a lot of discussion about, particularly at the moment, the glamorization of the uber-thinness being glamorized. It’s an important discussion to have, and just how much our diet culture and weight stigma permeates every facet of our culture. That’s the real problem and needs to change.”