The terror that arose from Ozempic

Insatiable and Obsession, two horror films indie recents, they put disturbing images of the said "Be careful what you wish for, it might come true". The resemblances between the third feature film by Australian Natalie Erika James and the successful first work of Curry Barker end here, although, in both cases, a stylized visual proposal and a great command of the mechanisms of cinematic terror are put at the service of a story that addresses absolutely contemporary issues in an allegorical key. If in Relic, the filmmaker's estimable debut, the usual haunted house movie tropes framed a tragic tale about the heavy burden of family legacy, Insatiable is a stunning catalog of scenes of body horror which places the consequences of aesthetic violence that affects women, above all, at the center of the story. It is a common theme of what theorist Barbara Creed coined as the New Wave of Feminist Cinema ("The substance by Coralie Fargeat and Raw by Julia Ducournau would be part of it), but James addresses it here with a literalness that connects the film directly to current events.

It is difficult not to link the pills that the insecure medical student Hana takes to lose weight at breakneck speed (never better said) with the disturbing real-life images on social media of extremely thin celebrities thanks to supposedly miraculous pills. Insatiable undoubtedly represents a step forward in James's career, especially regarding his exuberant staging, owing to the visual impact of the body horror, but also of the austere effectiveness of Japanese horror. The problem is that this ambition also affects a script marked by narrative bulimia that voraciously tries to tackle more themes than it is capable of digesting.