Pour yourself an iced latte, get your best camis on, and fix your charm bracelets – it’s time to go to the mall.
And, of course, by go to the mall, I mean watch Forbidden Fruits. Directed by Meredith Alloway, Forbidden Fruits came out earlier this year, and the young-adult-horror-satire has sort of slid under the radar since. But I feel it’s my job to tell you that this film is seriously excellent, and it’s our job to get it out of cult hit territory and into the mainstream.
Adapted from the play Of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die (written by Lily Houghton, who co-writes the script here alongside Alloway), Forbidden Fruits follows Pumpkin, (Lola Tung) a new arrival in the incestuous ecosystem of a Texas mall – at the heart of it is Free Eden, a clothing store staffed by Apple, Fig, and Cherry (Lili Reinhart, Victoria Pedretti, and Alexandra Shipp), a tight-knit friend group who dominate the social scene of the mall – and, as Pumpkin soon discovers, who might be getting up to more than just some stock taking after hours.
On its surface, Forbidden Fruits might look like your standard-issue The Craft knock-off – a story about female friendship and the complexities therein as told through the lens of witchcraft. And it certainly has plenty of that, with its deliciously arch approach to its central foursome and the pointedly feminine supernatural rituals that they participate in – wringing panties into cowboy boots to create potions, slow cookers instead of cauldrons, confessing sins to the spirit of Marilyn Monroe. The movie was produced by Diablo Cody, and it has echoes of her iconic teen movies like Juno and Jennifer’s Body in the knowing pastiche of the symbols of modern womanhood and how they fit into this strange little world.
The main characters drip with knowing nods to the young adult stereotypes that women are so often shoved into in these movies – Victoria Pedretti as the desperately needy, promisocous Fig in what has to be her best comedy performance to date, Lola Tung as the new girl navigating the complex social dynamics of her new friend group, Alexandra Shipp desperately trying to balance her new relationship with her commitment to her increasingly-toxic female friends. Lili Reinhart is, without a doubt, the star of the show here, in a soaringly monstrous performance as the controlling Apple – the manipulative chokehold she has on these women takes the classic mean girl to a whole new level, filtering her through the lens of female empowerment and girl’s-girl pseudo-support to disguise the obsession and insecurity that lays beneath. I’ve been a huge fan of Reinhart since Riverdale, and it’s such a joy to see her rise to the occasion for such an instantly-iconic and memorable character.
But what stood out to me about Forbidden Fruits above all else was how masterfully it crafts this story about the artificiality of the constructed sisterhood that sits in the centre of the movie. We barely leave the mall for the movie’s entire runtime (the passage of time, delightfully, marked by the changing of the seasonal clothing on sale at New Eden), and there’s this constant, suffocating sense of falseness that permeates the entire film as a result. In much the same way movies like But I’m a Cheerleader invent this artificial world to underline the fakeness at the heart of some of these characters, Forbidden Fruits has this brilliantly twisted take on how modern womanhood as an identity and a point of connection has been filtered through this capitalist lens till it is more destructive than anything else. Real care, real connection, real support over a shared identity is replaced by hollow symbols – the matching mass-produced charms dangling from the wrists of the main cast, while they all struggle with individual issues that go practically ignored or outright condemned by those who are meant to be their support system. In that regard, it reminds me a lot of Fight Club, in the way it delivers such a brilliant critique of toxic gender identity as translated through capitalism and consumerism.
And it manages to do all that without losing an inch of its entertainment value, which is a feat in and of itself. Forbidden Fruits is one of the most wildly entertaining movies of the year, with a deftly-delivered and timely message tying it all together. What did you think of this movie, and where does it rank on horror-teen classics for you? Let me know in the comments!
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By Lou MacGregor
No But Listen 