Saccharine — Ending Explained

The Gray is human ash, and Hana finds this out with a lab test. When she can no longer afford it, she makes her own by cremating parts of the cadaver, an obese cancer patient, that she and her friends have been studying. The ghost is Bertha, and as Hana burns calories Bertha grows more engorged. Hana realises that the tumour in her pancreas sits where Bertha's did and that it appeared after she consumed the ash. She believes ejecting it will cut the connection. I did not find a full account of the final scenes in my research. High On Films' review asks whether Hana recovers, and a viewer said the ending punishes her. Reviewers say the themes of self-acceptance and refusing to see fatness as a moral failing arrive only in the closing moments.

One reading sees an empathetic portrait of addiction and self-acceptance. Another, voiced by some viewers and critics, finds that it punishes its protagonist and clashes with its own message by lingering on food and bodies with disgust. The haunting can be read literally, or as Hana's internalised shame made visible. The central sapphic relationship also invites the "want to be her or be with her" reading.