A Forgotten Experimental Sci-Fi Film Is Coming To Blu-ray For The First Time

Something’s in the air in Shu Lea Cheang’s Fresh Kill. I’m not talking metaphorically. There’s a literal red haze that floats in New York’s Staten Island sky, as waste piles high in the Fresh Kills landfill. The city is rife with pollution affecting people and animals. This experimental sci-fi film paints clear divisions from the jump, of the haves — who dine at a lavish, extremely dark sushi restaurant — and the have-nots, who while away the hours living in tents or crowded apartments.

Claire (Erin McMurtry) works as a waitress at the same sushi restaurant where corporate big wigs make big plans that affect her life over meals she can’t afford, including a particularly pricey dish featuring the red lips of an exotic fish. She lives a happy life with her partner Shareen (Sarita Choudhury) and their daughter Honey (Nelini Stamp). One day, Claire brings home contaminated fish from work, which makes Honey glow green. She vanishes, sending Shareen and Claire into panic, which turns into action. They work with their friends Jiannbin (Abraham Lincoln Lim), a sushi chef, and Miguel (José Zúñiga), a dishwasher, who both work at the restaurant, to hack into the massive and menacing GX Corporation to get justice and find out what happened to their daughter Honey.

As a deeply independent film with non-traditional casting and a highly experimental approach to storytelling, Fresh Kill never received a wide release, and it barely got a home video release. The film has been exceptionally tricky to see just about anywhere, but that started to shift with a 35mm remaster in 2024, which screened across America. But thanks to Criterion, this radical breath of fresh air is now available in a sparkling Blu-ray that gives the film a new lease on life.

How was Fresh Kill Received Upon Release?

Unfortunately, Fresh Kill was hardly received at all upon release. As an avant-garde sci-fi, it premiered at the 1994 Berlin Film Festival, and appeared at numerous festivals throughout the year, including TIFF. But it never got a major theatrical run until its recent restoration.

That said, critics who did see it were fairly mixed. The Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas called it “a celebration of multicultural diversity with as much humor as seriousness,” while Janet Maslin of The New York Times said Fresh Kill is “aimless, arty self-indulgence carried to a remarkable extreme,” though she did (rightfully) praise the films great score from guitarist Vernon Reid.

Why Is Fresh Kill Important to See Now?

The word prescient gets thrown around a lot, but Fresh Kill is truly ahead of its time. In fact, 32 years after the film was first released, it still feels ahead of its time. Its themes of fighting the system and exposing how corporations pollute not just the waters, but also how the powers that be can pollute our bodies and minds, might be even more relevant than it was when the film first came out in 1994. It’s the kind of film that makes you want to get involved and take action, while also featuring an acidic wit and a sharp satirical sense. It’s a movie with a punk sensibility in its veins.

Cheang was inspired to make Fresh Kill after seeing reports of industrial waste being dumped around the world, which she discovered within her own home of New York City. There’s even a line in the film about building a park over the landfill, which could be treated as an absurdist throwaway gag. Yet that exact thing happened in Staten Island (where the film takes place), as the creation of Freshkills park first began in 2008, over the very landfill that gave Chang’s film its title.

Fresh Kill is also a key example of the “Be Gay, Do Crime” film canon, a subgenre in which queer people break the law. It’s one of the most easily justifiable uses of crime in the subgenre, as Claire and company are trying to expose the evil behind the destruction of the place they call home and the disappearance of their daughter. For those interested in hacker culture or movies about hackers, Fresh Kill is one of the most unique takes, skewering corporate culture with a wink and a nudge while being one of the very first examples of “hacktivism.” Hacking as a concept has extremely negative connotations, but Fresh Kill highlights how hacking can promote positive social change and expose great evils and corporate malfeasance.

What New Features Does the Fresh Kill Blu-ray Have?

The supplements on the Criterion Fresh Kill Blu-ray are really impressive. You’ll almost certainly have many questions during and after your watch, and the interviews on the disc deliver some valuable context on the making of the film, as well as how the film’s topics have evolved over the years.

• New 4K restoration, supervised and approved by director Shu Lea Cheang and director of photography Jane Castle, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• New interviews with Cheang and actor Sarita Choudhury
• New program highlighting the 2024 theatrical rerelease of the film and Cheang’s self-distribution
• Discussion with Cheang for the film’s thirtieth anniversary, moderated by scholar Jigna Desai, and presented by the Carsey-Wolf Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara
• LG Guggenheim Art and Technology Initiative profile of Cheang, recipient of the organization’s 2024 award for artist achievement
• PLUS: An essay by artist and technologist Mindy Seu