Forbidden Fruits review
Four characters in search of a narrative.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
Forbidden Fruits
Directed by Meredith Alloway
Screenplay by Lily Houghton and Meredith Alloway
Starring Lili Reinhart, Lola Tung, Victoria Pedretti, Alexandrea Shipp, Emma Chamberlain, Siddharth Sharma and Gabrielle Union
Forbidden Fruits Review
It isn’t easy to find a movie to compare Forbidden Fruits to. That’s a good sign more often than not. Forbidden Fruits gets there in a pretty unique way though. I had no idea what the movie was about for almost its entire runtime. Ok…that’s an exaggeration. It’s about four women who work at the mall and are part of a witch coven. It also gives you enough information to know that their newest member has joined looking to learn the truth about…something. What isn’t there, however, is an easily definable plot. Forbidden Fruits eventually answers its one small question, of course. I’m not sure it qualifies as having had a plot. I’m also not sure that it matters.
Forbidden Fruits is what I like to call a “vibes movie”. Some people are going to watch this and fall in love with it. I’d wager very heavily that it becomes a cult classic once enough people who will connect with it have discovered it. It’s colorful and full of fun character moments. It’s funny and stylish and completely original. Those are all hallmarks of a movie that will connect strongly with a large enough part of its audience to make a notable mark. Even if you spend an hour and a half searching for what in the world is propelling it forward.
Pumpkin (Lola Tung) works in the mall food court…but she wants to get in with the popular girls working at Free Eden. She accomplishes this fairly quickly…despite concealing a secret agenda. Apple (Lili Reinhart) is the leader of the all fruit named trio turned quartet. Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) and Fig (Alexandra Shipp) round out the group. Oh, they also happen to be witches.
That’s roughly all of the plot that I can squeeze into the recap. It’s also nearly all that Forbidden Fruits is going to give you until its climax. We learn about the four characters…following them through different retail seasons at the store. There’s a dark backstory of a hex gone…right, I guess? Cherry and Fig have their own secrets that they try to hide from Apple who is a pretty strict leader. Pumpkin uses that to get Cherry and Fig to reveal what they know about Apple and some other dark moments in her past. Mostly though…we’re just hanging out with the popular girls/modern day witches.
And it kind of works. The first act of Forbidden Fruits can feel a little awkward as you wait for that plot driving moment to arrive. It never does…but the movie settles into a likable groove as Pumpkin maneuvers through Apple’s twisted idea of sisterhood. There are enough zany moments (especially from Pedretti’s completely lost Cherry) to keep things feeling fun. There are a few bloody parts that culminate in a series of unexpected moments in the film’s climax. The reveal of what’s been happening the entire time is a bit clunky…but leads to an unexpected finale in its own right. By doing little on the way to doing a lot, Forbidden Fruits keeps you on your toes. Nothing about it is very predictable. Another good sign for the quality of the film and its chances of being remembered.
But some people are going to hate it. The lack of major plot points can make Forbidden Fruits feel like it’s wandering aimlessly most of the time. The movie seems to be aware of this, by the way. A mid-credit scene hilariously turns its attention to discussing the “plot” in a way that has to have been intentional. Suddenly, Forbidden Fruits becomes completely obsessed with that plot we’ve barely been watching the entire time. After the credits begin. It feels like it’s teasing a sequel to a movie we weren’t watching from the right perspective. Like an entire second plot we weren’t aware of was playing out even further in the background. Watching the mid-credit scene attack it as if it was the most important thing in the story was extremely funny to me.
Whether the strangeness was completely intentional or not, Forbidden Fruits (mostly) works due to its cast. Pedretti gets to steal all the scenes as the often cartoonish Cherry. Lili Reinhart plays Apple as an ice-cold and probably psychopathic character. It’s hard to figure out what she’s thinking from scene to scene…but you can guess that it probably isn’t anything good. Lola Tung is our way into the group…and our protagonist even though we aren’t always sure what her mission is. Pumpkin is a good foil for Apple…working to expose…something…throughout the story. Alexandra Shipp’s Fig is torn between the rules of the coven and her budding and frowned upon romance with a guy from the mall. She gets some funny moments too…pairing well with Cherry as the comical side characters to Apple and Pumpkin’s actions.
Everything that Forbidden Fruits is doing basically works. It gets bloody when it needs to…and has fine fore effects when it does so. Not spelling out an obvious plot to drive the story around fits the strange vibes the movie is going for. When things finally hit the fan…Forbidden Fruits pushes several unexpected buttons in a row. Things go off the rails in a way that feels fitting for the story that precedes it…and still manages to surprise on top of that. This is the kind of movie that will immediately become some people’s favorite…and leave many others wondering what’s so special about it. Which means it probably succeeds at what it was intending to be in the first place.
Scare Value
Forbidden Fruits feels purposely aimless for an unexpected amount of time. There are a few moments to point you in the direction the narrative will eventually take…but most of it is simply spending time with the main characters. It feels weird in a way that fits the overall tone of the film. This is a vibes movie that inevitably turns into a dark movie. Those vibes are likely to connect with enough viewers to make Forbidden Fruits the kind of cult classic that we hear more about years from now than upon this release.
3/5
Forbidden Fruits Link
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