Screenwriter and director Aaron Fisher brought almost the entire cast to the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFFF) for the world premiere of *Corporate Retreat*. Is this a project so prestigious and glorious that red carpets should be rolled out everywhere? Or is the opposite actually true? Perhaps the young cast simply has nothing better to do and is trying to divert attention from the fact that *Corporate Retreat* is, in reality, a rather silly movie? It is undoubtedly the latter—though I don't want to sound too negative, since, all things considered, I did have fun with *Corporate Retreat*. Furthermore, it is undeniably a film that fits perfectly into a festival like BIFFF, as it features an extreme amount of gratuitous gore, absurd dark humor, some repulsive moments that make you squirm in your seat, young and attractive faces (both male and female), a catchy soundtrack, and... Did I mention there’s a lot of gore? Director: Aaron Fisher Writers: Aaron Fisher, K...
How far would you go just to finally feel at ease within your own body? That is exactly where *Saccharine* begins for me, and it is also where the film demonstrates its greatest strength—not merely as a work of body horror, but as a piece that transforms shame, self-image, and that urge to remake oneself into something far more repulsive. What I appreciated about it is that the film doesn't simply present diet culture and the obsession with beauty as mere themes for the viewer to observe; it truly renders them physical. It turns them into something that takes root inside you, that gets under your skin, and that—at a certain point—ceases to feel like a matter of control, becoming instead something that has completely spiraled out of it. It is precisely for this reason that the similarities to *The Substance* struck me as so effective: that sensation that your own body is no longer the vessel you inhabit, but rather something against which you must wage a ceaseless battle. Director:...