Movie
Saccharine
Narrative tropes
Man-Made Monsters
highHana, a medical student, uses her lab access and scientific training to manufacture pills from a cremated cadaver — a clear act of science overstepping natural and ethical boundaries. All three core conditions are met: an identifiable creator (Hana, operating in a college lab), a boundary-crossing act of creation (burning and consuming human remains), and the creation turning against her (Bertha's ghost grows larger and more aggressive the more Hana consumes). Four signals fire: Hana is the identifiable scientist-creator; the ghost has autonomous, escalating power she cannot control; her obsession with thinness and romantic pursuit blinds her to the risks; and consuming human ashes carries an unmistakable 'playing God' equivalent (violating the boundary between the living and the dead).
About this trope: A creator uses science to overstep natural boundaries — creating life, resurrecting the dead, engineering organisms, or fundamentally altering nature — and the creation turns destructive.
Good Intentions, Terrible Results
mediumHana's motivations are genuinely sympathetic — she has a binge eating disorder, deep body image insecurity, and a real desire for connection — making her the well-intentioned actor driving monstrous outcomes. All three core conditions are present: her motivations are relatable and understandable; her plan (manufacture illicit diet pills) functionally achieves its goal (dramatic weight loss) but only by desecrating a corpse; and her absolute certainty that thinness will earn love propels increasingly extreme and self-destructive acts. Three signals are clear: her goals (lose weight, win affection) are reasonable on their face; achieving them requires an atrocity rationalized as private and victimless; and her internal logic — I need to be thin, I need these pills, I'll make them myself — is internally consistent but morally horrifying in execution.
About this trope: A villain — or sometimes a hero — genuinely believes they are doing the right thing, but their well-meaning plan leads to monstrous outcomes. The scariest antagonists think they're saving the world.
Movies that share these tropes
Full plot (spoilers)
Hana (Midori Francis) is a Japanese-Australian medical student struggling with binge eating, body image insecurity, and a compulsive eating disorder. She harbors romantic feelings for Alanya (Madeleine Madden), an attractive fitness instructor and social media influencer who embodies an aspirational physical ideal. When Hana reconnects with an acquaintance who has experienced dramatic weight loss, she learns about a mysterious and illicit diet pill called 'Gray.' Testing the pills in her college lab, she makes a disturbing discovery: they appear to be composed of human ashes. The pills cost over $5,000 AUD, putting them out of reach through legitimate means. Desperate to lose weight and win Alanya's attention, Hana exploits her access to cadavers during medical training. She obtains remains from a corpse her cohort has mockingly nicknamed 'Big Bertha'—an obese woman—burns the organs, and manufactures her own homemade pills from the resulting ashes, which she begins taking herself. The pills produce dramatic weight loss, and Hana gains the confidence to pursue Alanya. However, she soon begins to be haunted by Bertha's vengeful ghost—described in the film through the framework of Buddhist 'hungry ghost' folklore. The spirit grows larger and more aggressive the thinner Hana becomes. The haunting manifests primarily through convex reflections, especially in spoons, creating a visual metaphor linking bodily distortion to supernatural presence. The ghost torments Hana during episodes of uncontrollable binge eating, blurring the boundary between possession and disorder. As her body changes, her moral deterioration accelerates. She misreads Alanya's concern as rejection, intensifying her compulsive behavior and internal conflict. The film weaves in Hana's biracial identity tensions—between a self-sacrificing Japanese mother and a more rebellious Australian father—as further context for her drive toward self-erasure. In the final act, the film escalates into a series of shock reveals and grotesque visual effects. Reviewers note that the ending trades its sharp commentary on diet culture and fatphobia for visceral horror set pieces, with the supernatural threat culminating in a confrontation that critics describe as 'admittedly fascinating' but narratively overstretched. The film does not fully resolve its central metaphor about body dysmorphia, opting instead for an intense but divisive climax.
Sources: Wikipedia, Screen Anarchy, Collider, Roger Ebert (RogerEbert.com), Screen Rant, Eye for Film, The Film Verdict, Rotten Tomatoes