Forbidden Fruits Is The Campy Gorefest Teen Girls Have Been Waiting For

It feels correct that Diablo Cody’s name appears in the credits of Forbidden Fruits. Cody didn’t write the film; it’s adapted from the deliciously named play Of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die by Lily Houghton, loosely inspired by Houghton’s experience working at a bohemian retail chain. Cody didn’t direct, either; that job goes to Meredith Alloway, making the jump to feature filmmaking after a series of well-received short films. But Diablo Cody — who serves as a producer on Forbidden Fruits — wrote Jennifer’s Body. And without Jennifer’s Body, this film, and others like it, would not exist.

Forbidden Fruits is part of a burgeoning subgenre of horror movies that engage specifically with femininity and feminine aesthetics, dubbed “girl horror” in a recent article in Rue Morgue magazine. “Girl horror” gained momentum in the late 2010s, corresponding to the increased presence of women, both as fans and as creators, in the once almost entirely male horror space. At the same time, critics started to re-evaluate Cody and director Karyn Kusama’s 2009 film, making the duo patron saints of a new wave of unapologetically girly horror flicks like Raw (2016) and Promising Young Woman (2020).

Alloway’s work is part of this tradition: Her 2019 short film Deep Tissue, for example, uses cannibalistic impulses to explore body image and sexuality against a backdrop of billowy pink hotel curtains. Visually, Forbidden Fruits is a little harder-edged, encasing its girlypop vibe in the minimalist aesthetic of 21st-century retail. The effect is like a glittery set of long acrylic nails, whimsical and feminine but also hard and sharp. And the claws are certainly out in this movie, both in the dialogue and, later on, in a pair of gory sequences that take the characters’ cattiness to shocking new levels.

The only thing that doesn’t feel contemporary about Forbidden Fruits is that it takes place at a mall, an institution that has all but disappeared in most North American cities. Specifically, it takes place in a mall in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, where alpha femme Apple (Lili Reinhart) and her coworkers/sidekicks Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) and Fig (Alexandra Shipp) rule over the Free Eden boutique with an iron fist in a vinyl statement glove. They have a manager, Sharon (Gabrielle Union), but she’s only there because the last young woman to run with this clique — poor, whimsically named Pickle (Emma Chamberlain) — had a “menty b” and was hospitalized after a falling-out with the group.

That means that Free Eden is hiring, and the enterprising Pumpkin (Lola Tung) gets the job after proving that she’s way too hot and cool to work at an (ew) pretzel stand. The fact that she’s named after a fruit, specifically one associated with autumn, helps quite a bit, given that Pickle’s departure has also created an opening in the coven of witches Apple and the girls operate after hours in the Free Eden dressing room. The film’s witchcraft sequences epitomize the blend of light and dark that characterizes Forbidden Fruits: Sure, the potion Pumpkin has to drink as part of her initiation ritual is brewed inside of a spangled cowboy boot, but it also contains human blood.

Some of the edge in this film is character-driven: The relationship between Apple and Cherry is abusive, as Apple gaslights Cherry into believing that she’s too unstable to make even the smallest decisions for herself. Fig, who graduated college with a degree in physics before getting her job at Free Eden, is warier and more independent. But she’s still complicit, keeping her relationship with her boyfriend secret so as not to provoke Apple and her pathological need for control over the coven. Cynically wrapping these toxic dynamics in chirpy platitudes about “girls supporting girls” is one of the film’s most clever elements, posing questions about what a healthy friendship really looks like to the film’s target audience of young women.

Late in the story, Forbidden Fruits shifts from a campy, character-driven witchcraft romp into a slasher movie, with a classic slasher-movie twist at the end. This is the film's biggest flaw, as by the time it starts ramping up its stalk-and-murder scenes, it’s too late to build any sustained suspense. If this pivot had come sooner, maybe the film — and the audience — might have had more time to settle into this new horror idiom. Either way, the grotesque set pieces that anchor this portion of the movie are as outrageous as the outfits the Free Eden girls wear to establish their dominance on the sales floor and in the food court.

Smartly cast with an ensemble of up-and-coming young actors who deliver the bitchy comedic dialogue like they wrote it themselves, Forbidden Fruits is very much of our current moment. Reinhart’s performance is especially strong, starting off intimidating before evolving into terrifying with the hint of pathos that’s always necessary for a good horror villain. But all involved, from the stars to the costume and set designers, embrace the film’s very specific sensibility, which will not be for everyone. But for teenage girls who are getting into horror, or adult women who wish that there had been movies like this when they were younger, both the concept and its execution will hold considerable appeal. No, you can’t sit with them — but you wouldn’t want to, anyway.

Forbidden Fruits opens in theaters on March 27 from Shudder and Independent Film Company.