SACCHARINE: Trailer & Poster Premiere For Natalie Erika James' Body-Image Horror

Independent Film Company and SHUDDER are proud to share

the official trailer & poster for SACCHARINE, the sapphic,

body-image horror by director Natalie Erika James.

 

SACCHARINE opens in select theaters across the U.S. on May 22nd!

 

FROM VISIONARY DIRECTOR

 

NATALIE ERIKA JAMES

RELIC, APARTMENT 7A

 

STARRING

 

MIDORI FRANCIS

DANIELLE MACDONALD

MADELEINE MADDEN

 

 

Hana (Midori Francis), a lovelorn medical student, becomes terrorized by a sinister force after taking part in an obscure weight loss craze: eating human ashes.

 

Filmmaker Natalie Erika James' (RELIC) third feature offers a modern and timely take on toxic messaging around weight and appearance that permeates every corner of our culture. With her latest film SACCHARINE, James takes an intimate look into one woman’s struggle with body image, self-worth, and shame-driven compulsion, told through a supernatural body-horror with a queer lens. 

 

Independent Film Company will open SACCHARINE in theaters across the U.S. on Friday, May 22nd followed by a Shudder streaming release in July.

The film's scares are effective, if not subtle. Robert Mackenzie's sound design and Larry Van Duynhoven's prosthetic work carry equal weight, and James adheres to the familiar slow-burn rhythms of prestige horror. The climax is heavily telegraphed, its moralism echoing the cautionary bluntness of Tales from the Crypt.

 

Yet the film's social implications -- its diagnosis of a collective, culturally reinforced nightmare -- lend it an unsettling force. Saccharine may not surprise, but it knows exactly where to press, and why the pressure hurts.