***spoilers ahead***
Fun and Evil with a Touch of Yawns
Forbidden Fruits is a horror-comedy adapted from a play by Lily Houghton and starring Lili Reinhart (Riverdale), Lola Tung (The Summer I Turned Pretty), and Victoria Pedretti (You).
There is no denying it: Lili Reinhart is absolute magic on screen. She has been oozing charisma since her Riverdale days, but seeing her shed that “girl-next-door” vibe for something more calculated and sinister was a total breath of fresh air. She is breathtaking in every single frame, trading in the ‘Betty Cooper’ sweetness for a role that lets her lean into a much darker and domineering “evil” energy, and it worked… supernaturally.
Every scene where Reinhart’s character ‘Apple’ floods the airwaves with that sonic bitchy sass, enhanced the excitement of that scene shifting its gears entirely. That specific brand of dynamic charisma is what dragged this film from “meh” territory into something genuinely entertaining.
Think The Craft meets Mean Girls, and I mean that literally, as it was shot in the same mall as the latter. The absolute peak of Forbidden Fruits lies in those “Mean Girl-esque” moments. The story also constantly triggered memories of American Horror Story: Coven for me, which was a season I absolutely loved.
The chemistry amongst the coven girls was stellar. As Reinhart herself noted at the Q&A after the screening “cohesiveness was baked into the script for us to relate to each other,” and it shows. Within that crew, Alexandra Shipp’s character ‘Fig’ really stood out as the brains of the operation; the guiding, intelligent voice that kept the group grounded. Pedretti also elevated the film with her mischievous raunchy quips and behavior. She really must have had fun playing that part.
Yes, the script is sprinkled with plenty of funny quips, but I’d label it “very funny” rather than “hilarious.” The real struggle is the pacing. Much like I Love Boosters, this film starts incredibly strong with those high-energy mean girl social dynamics and situations, but starts to dip significantly in value during Acts 2 and 3.
By the time we reached the big kills, it felt like a case of too little, too late. The escalator death, where Victoria Pedretti’s ‘Cherry’ meets her demise, actually had me saying out loud to myself “What am I even watching?”. Between that and the falling glass death, those gory moments felt wholly unnecessary and didn’t really serve the story. It felt like the movie was trying to make up for a slow middle with exaggerated shock tactics that just didn’t land.
The film wraps up with a clear setup for a sequel involving a second coven at another mall and the revelation that ‘Apple’ is being pursued closely by the FBI. Just as I was ready to write the movie off, it delivers a decent twist; that late-game pivot adds enough psychological depth to save the experience from a negative review. Truthfully, while it’s a rocky ride, Reinhart’s performance and that final shift in perspective make it worth a watch for fans of the “coven” horror subgenre, even if I probably won’t be personally lining up for the next installment.