Then, just when Fresh threatens to run out of steam, the final 20 minutes devolve into utter chaos - as if, having no idea how to end Noa’s story, the filmmakers threw up their hands and decided to do everything all at once in hopes something would work. Frustrated by scrolling dating apps only to end up on lame, tedious dates, Noa takes a chance by giving her number to the awkwardly charming Steve after a produce-section meet-cute at the grocery store. But the film settles for reiterating its core ideas in more and more dramatic terms, rather than deepening or expanding them. Fresh‘s central allegory is a clever one, and the horror story that spins out from it never less than gripping. It’s as a narrative that Fresh falls a bit short. With an almost two-hour run time, there is intrigue as to how a horror film can. It is a seductive horror, toying with the audience’s expectations of intimacy while giving a horrific take on the modern dating scene. Paired with a soundtrack that combines ’80s synth-pop, indie rock and electronica, Fresh is almost overwhelming as a sensory experience. Mimi Cave ’s Fresh embraces the intimacy of food, bringing the horrors its infatuation can create in its most extreme form. It can provoke queasiness by juxtaposing two strong but clashing colors, or claustrophobia by filling a room with too much of a single shade. Fresh has no shortage of gory, gleefully explicit imagery, but it also throws the viewer off balance in quieter ways. When it zooms out, it luxuriates in saturated colors and rich textures, often to unnerving effect. In keeping with the film’s themes about consumption and commodification, it frequently fragments human bodies into incomplete collections of parts: a mouth wrapping around a morsel of food, fingertips caressing a neck in the shower, legs pounding the pavement during a run. The true star of Fresh, however, is its style - lush, unsettling and precise. Even backed into the most desperate of corners, her Noa projects some inner reservoir of strength and wit that keeps the viewer from ever losing sight of the real hero. Daisy Edgar-Jones (Normal People) and Sebastian Stan (Pam & Tommy) star in this sly thriller about a young woman sick of the modern dating world. That Edgar-Jones is able to maintain her footing against such unhinged charisma is a feat in itself. But it’s when the character’s true nature is revealed that Stan rises to his full potential, channeling Patrick Bateman while dancing to Animotion’s “Obsession” in his kitchen or monologuing to an unfortunately captive audience. In early scenes, he’s an eminently reasonable romantic lead - the kind of guy you totally believe could get a girl’s number at the grocery store with a cutesy anecdote about Cotton Candy grapes. The real narrative shocks lay in how they manifest, and the gruesome consequences that ripple from them.Īs Steve, Stan gives one of the most arresting performances of his career. It’s a testament to the ballsiness of Kahn’s script, though, that Steve’s sick motives are just the tip of the iceberg. If the wink-wink wordplay in the official plot synopsis doesn’t give it away, Kahn’s script and Cave’s visual approach drop plenty of hints long before Steve comes out with it. The eerie opening credits roll - white text warping over disorienting close-ups of floors, paintings and what looks like pools of fresh blood - and Fresh reveals itself as the horror story it truly is.įresh is more fun without spoilers, but it’s not especially difficult to guess what Steve’s terrible secret is. Gibbs) quite reasonably describes as “the straight girl’s fantasy come true,” and agrees to let Steve whisk her away to a romantic getaway in the woods.Īt this point, over half an hour into the 114-minute film, the other shoe drops. So she lets herself indulge in what her best friend Mollie (Jojo T. It may not be true love - Noa declares herself too hardened to believe in such things - but it feels like a genuine connection. Fresh, the new film starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan, has had been stirring up buzz since it premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. Gibbs, Andrea Bang, Dayo Okeniyi, Charlotte Le Bon, Brett Dier, and Alina Maris.
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