The best coven stories (The Craft, Heathers, and Mean Girls, of course) always involve a newcomer with unclear intentions. For this latest, Forbidden Fruits, a collection of spooky retail employees is shaken by the arrival of a pretzel peddler with suspect motives. The team of shopgirls named for seasonal fruits — Apple (Lili Reinhart), Cherry (Victoria Pedretti), and Fig (Alexandra Shipp) — are vexed by a newcomer named Pumpkin (Lola Tung) who wants to be rescued from her food court deployment and brought into the sweet embrace of Free Eden. Free Eden, which is definitely not Free People, is the boho chic store of girls’ dreams, operated by this sparkling bowl of fruit who uses their fitting rooms to host their coven rituals. Apple is their de facto leader, an ice cold but welcoming presence who insists her studies of the occult are legit, and the one Pumpkin must impress if she’s to be welcomed into their ranks. But Pumpkin has some non-organic intentions, and so while she might be a magnet for Apple’s wiles, she could just as well be the catalyst of the downfall of the loyal group of well-dressed girly pops.
Director Meredith Alloway co-wrote this first feature along with Lily Houghton, the scribe of the original stage play. Their great success here is existing in a world full of Mean Girls and The Craft remakes, yet creating a new story for the next generation. Sure, those films are heavily and knowingly referenced (they even shot in Sherway Gardens, the same mall featured in the former), but this is decidedly their own movie about a handful of women sporting identifiable and distinguishable hairstyles. And while those comparisons are apt, Forbidden Fruits also shares much in common with The Love Witch, another tale of a witchy woman purporting to upend the patriarchy while actively participating in it.
And that’s the center of the successful social satire of Forbidden Fruits. The girls are retail mavens who flaunt their looks in slinky outfits and sell women $400 scarves. But they’re also dancing with misandry, hexing men and following Apple’s strict rules not on which days they can wear pink, but where and when they can entertain the whims of men. Like the lead of The Love Witch, they seem to cater to the male gaze but are fundamentally opposed to men’s sexual advances despite engaging with them. Their harsh rules are tested when Fig wants to pivot a fling with a man into a relationship, and Cherry skips her Apple-mandated therapy to hook up in other mall dressing rooms. Those flames are fanned by the cunning Pumpkin, who seems to be looking to erode trust within the group. At times, the satire plays second string to the film’s knowing references, which weakens its overall messaging in favor of internet speak and gags, but it’s buoyed enough by visual appeal to engulf a viewer willing to engage in the vapidity.
It’s all such a sparkly feature that calls back to the ’90s and 2000s teen girl bests. It opens on a “getting ready” closeup sequence that’ll take anyone back to the age of Legally Blonde, playing in the sandbox of plucky feminist tales and adding its coats of blood. Alloway’s movie is gruesome, boasting shocking moments that’ll make you question the effectiveness of the dark magic you consider each full moon. And the blood red sizzles atop the hazy pink midnighter appearance (from Infinity Pool and Orphan: First Kill cinematographer Karim Hussain) of the rest of the flick. This contributes to its ability to transcend time, feeling relevant to groups of women in any era, even if smart phones and live streams are ever present.
In a world where women are meant to fit a specific mold as directed by men, it’s a lark to see a story of four girls seeming to cater to that while weaponizing it against their purported enemy. It’s an interesting companion to this year’s 1000 Women in Horror which chronicles other instances of horror films playing to the fears of what happens when women get together and are left to their own sinister devices. Forbidden Fruits has women dancing under pentagrams to DJ Sammy’s “Heaven.” It’s an inspired slice of cinema that makes you wonder, is this real witchcraft or is it girlie games? Or are those things one and the same?
Bloody falls and bisected bodies? Couldn’t be me, I’m just a girl!
