New disordered eating films channel modern body image
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- Saccharine, directed by Natalie Erika James, follows medical student Hana Hitching (Midori Francis) who takes an illicit supplement containing human cremation ash, then is stalked by the ghost of the dead woman, who pushes her to binge as she becomes drastically underweight
- Maddie's Secret, written, directed by and starring John Early as food influencer Maddie Ralph, depicts the protagonist hospitalized for cardiac arrest and a gastrointestinal perforation after dormant bulimia resurfaces under mounting work pressure
- Both films release less than a year after the 'shrinking girl summer' trend and name-check or speak to the proliferation of weight-loss drugs; Maddie's Secret directly name-drops Ozempic and shows patients at a treatment centre having phones confiscated to block triggering algorithm-driven content
- Maddie's Secret was partly inspired by what Early told IndieWire was the 'sinister and very sexual' food content his algorithm began recommending, while Saccharine's Hana tries the viral TikTok 'potato masher' arm-slimness challenge and comes from an 'almond mom' household
- The films extend a 2024 wave of body-horror and body-fixation movies including The Substance, Shell and Uglies, plus 2025's The Ugly Stepsister, a Cinderella reimagining in which a tapeworm is prescribed as a weight-loss remedy
- Both films locate disordered eating in inherited maternal trauma — Hana's slender mother and Maddie's mother whose 'stinging jabs' helped seed her relapse — and depict how bodies are policed even outside the family, from medical students mocking an obese cadaver to a new hire telling Maddie it's 'refreshing' to see a 'not scary thin' food creator
- The source flags a sharp internal critique: Saccharine, despite its body-positive messaging, 'succumbs to its own form of othering' by turning an obese woman into a monstrous, vengeful figure in death, while Maddie's Secret is praised for radiating 'sincere empathy' for its protagonist
Why it matters: Released less than a year after 'shrinking girl summer' and the mainstreaming of Ozempic, these two films suggest cultural anxiety about extreme thinness has migrated from TikTok and diet-trend coverage into genre cinema, using horror and dark comedy to dramatize disordered eating that the article ties directly to maternal judgment, viral body-shaming challenges and algorithmic food content.
