Forbidden Fruits

The film is a witchy mall comedy that mostly keeps you under its spell.

It captures so well the insanity of the contradictions we–particularly women–have to live into daily.

That's what makes Forbidden Fruits feel both timely and timeless. We rarely leave the inside of the mall, giving the film a claustrophobic feel. The girls use cell phones – it'd be strange if they didn't – but any recognizable social media are absent. It feels like a distinctly modern take on female friendship, but one that owes a great deal to the films that have come before it. And it's lost the sort of optimism that those films often came with.

If you don’t worry about the story and just immerse yourself in the gags, Alloway’s film is a must-watch for the Venn diagram overlap between Shudder subscribers and the slumber party crowd.

Forbidden Fruits can’t reconcile all of its influences and just ends up as a collection of references and high style without much staying power — it’s essentially the fast fashion of girly pop horror.

Though Reinhart and Pedretti chew through the scenery with dedication, the film, directed and written by Meredith Alloway, is a vibes-only pastiche that has little to add to the satirical queen-bee subgenre besides some updated slang.

Beyond some decent performances that aren’t done justice by this script, and some fairly wild leaps into horror, Forbidden Fruits isn’t ripe, it’s just rotten.

Failed seduction. I feel overwhelmed by a strange sensation, like I’ve somehow lost my way. I’m almost disoriented. It’s the kind of cinema that forces me to ruminate—not because of any profound complexity, but because the film seems to want to play hide-and-seek with me. I have ideas about what I might have witnessed on screen, what its purpose could be, what it might mean. But none of it feels clear. I find myself questioning not only what I’m seeing, but how I feel while trying to decode what it’s attempting to convey. I suspect it’s a manifesto against sin, an exploration of morality framed through the aesthetic of a witch cult. The visual motif of fruit—the symbol of betrayal and of Adam and Eve—and a power dynamic shaped by Lili Reinhart suggest a critique of hierarchies that borders on the preachy. All of this ends up feeling like a feminist discourse rooted in the mistreatment of a father toward his daughter—in other words, a gender discourse born out of resentment and trauma. My issue with 'Forbidden Fruits' isn’t so much its message, but my inability to fully grasp it. I appreciate not being spoon-fed with flashy visuals and obvious cues like a child—but either I’m missing something, or the way the message is delivered becomes a wall that prevents me from clearly understanding what’s happening. And that’s a problem with the script, which at times feels like discarded material. The characters achieve the difficult feat of appearing human, even if at their core they remain conceptual tools. They represent current conflicts: the desire to please, the fractures that break friendships, clashing ideals. They brush against stereotype. There’s a minimal sense of growth that emerges from the emptiness that defines them. Their arcs keep the story just barely engaging; otherwise, everything would collapse. The limited acting charisma is what keeps my interest afloat, though not by much. Visually, the film does have its appeal, but without excess. It distances itself from the kind of cinematography I expected. I was hoping for something saturated with color, stylized lighting, strikingly cinematic, maybe even accompanied by modern, catchy music—anything, really. What I get instead is something predictable: some blood. But it’s cheap, with effects that don’t land. There’s a thread of lesbian sexual tension, something explored more fully in 'Honey Don't' by the Coen Brothers, but here it merely provokes. The only truly captivating visual element lies in the exotic, sometimes extravagant and seductive costumes. Let’s be honest—it plays into making the female figure attractive, and it succeeds. It’s a shame that this ends up being the strongest aspect, because the message itself feels weak. I don’t feel any sense of revolution, nor a genuine conflict. The dialogue feels lifted straight from casual conversations between friends, which clashes with a narrative rhythm that grows heavier and more sluggish as the film progresses. The revolution that should pull me in—make me feel part of this rebellion tearing down the walls of patriarchy and power structures—fails to do so. Much like in 'The Bride', it’s just noise. The issue isn’t the message, but the execution. It’s an insignificant film that fails to dismantle any prejudice, instead exhausting my patience almost entirely. It’s an exercise in social critique that falters at its core—pacing and script—resulting in an experience that, rather than shifting any perspective, ends up being a complete drag.

Un sinsentido total. Personajes y trama absurdos que no llevan a nada. Una pérdida de tiempo.