With the horror comedy Forbidden Fruits, debuting director Meredith Alloway has created the best movie in years that’s set in a mall. Featuring strong performances from all four leads, Forbidden Fruits draws from influences from Mean Girls to The Craft to Jennifer’s Body, the latter of which it shares a producer with, Diablo Cody. It also packs in some sharp satire of girlboss feminism, which is of the moment.
The film’s based on a play called Of the Women Came the Beginning of Sin, and Through Her We All Die, by Lily Houghton, who co-wrote the script with Alloway. Though filmed in Canada, it’s set in the Dallas suburbs, with the action taking place almost entirely within a single mall.
Aside from finding ways to make a mall look spooky, first thing in the morning and late at night, the film’s best insight is that it recreates the dynamics of Mean Girls-style high school cliques, among mall employees who are pushing 30.
At the top of the heap is the Regina George figure, Apple (Lili Reinhart), who works at an upscale clothing store called Free Eden, while lording over her minions Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) and Fig (Alexandra Shipp), and getting controlling about their behavior and who they’re allowed to date.
Into their domain steps Pumpkin (Lola Tung, Belly from The Summer I Turned Pretty), who comes from a lower caste—the mall pretzel store—but is soon welcomed into the clique. It’s something of a store, in which every time a customer is rung up, it costs comically large amounts of money.
The group operates a full-on witches’ coven, one that’s placed hexes on people, including the previous person who tried to become the fourth member. It’s clear early on that Pumpkin’s up to something, although exactly what is the film’s biggest mystery.
Sporting sexy clothes that seem to be borrowed/stolen from the store, and with next-to-no supervision, the coven wreaks havoc. However, Apple’s using manipulation and a cynical form of girlboss feminism that gives her more of a hold on her minions than anything supernatural.
Aside from Shipp, the performers are all better known from TV than movies, with Reinhart having starred in Riverdale, Pedretti in The Haunting of Hill House, and Tung in The Summer I Turned Pretty. But all of them are good here, with Pedretti doing an effective turn as a character who’s essentially in an abusive relationship with her coworker.
Forbidden Fruits is mostly about atmosphere and character for its first two acts, but by the end, things get gory. Jennifer’s Body, after flopping upon release in 2009, emerged years later as a cult classic, but Forbidden Fruits might not have to wait as long.