The horrors of modern dating seen through one young woman’s defiant battle to survive her new boyfriend’s unusual appetites.
Chuck says:
Mimi Cave’s “Fresh” is not the sort of film you expect to see at the Sundance Film Festival but when it premiered there in January, it caused a bit of a sensation. Being promoted as a darkly satiric look at the world of modern dating, critics who have rallied around it – and there are quite a few as it’s trending at 83% positive on Rotten Tomatoes- have proclaimed it to be a feminist treatise regarding the misogynist minefield that awaits today’s woman as they try to find a reliable partner.
It may be that, as far as it goes, but it’s something else as well – a tasteless, bloody horror film that wallows excessive gore and graphic violence. In the end, this approach undercuts any message Cave might be trying to put across.
Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is a twentysomething eager to make an emotional and – if truth be told – physical connection with a member of the opposite sex. We see her on a date early on with a passive aggressive cad that underscores how rough it is out there, apparently. However, things seem to take a turn for the better when she meets Steve (Sebastian Stan) in the produce section of her local grocery. It’s a meet cute right out of the movies and despite some initial misgivings, Noa gives herself over to this guy after a couple of dates. Her best friend Mollie (Jojo Gibbs) warns her that her new beau must be too good to be true – he’s handsome, charming, a surgeon and all-around nice guy – but Noa throws caution to the wind, agreeing to go on a weekend trip with Steve.
All of this occurs within the first half hour and Cave is hardly subtle when it comes to signaling the film’s shift in tone. The opening credits begin to run when Steve drugs our gullible heroine and we quickly find that she’s not the only one who’s fallen for his tricks. Seems there are two other women being held hostage and Mr. Too-Good-To-Be-True is carving them up, piece by piece and selling this fresh meat to high-end perverts who consume it. (It’s a meat market! Get it?)
I understand Cave’s intent and I was willing to give this approach a chance, primarily because of the work of the two leads. Edgar-Jones is very good, her transformation from desperate naïf to despairing victim and finally, fierce Final Girl is convincing and winning. She proves a good counterpoint to Stan’s Steve, whose inherent charm holds him in good stead. You understand fully why Noa would fall for him and when you see him reveal his true self, the dynamic that develops between the two keeps us engaged through the film’s second act.
However, once the inevitable bloodletting starts, the wheels fall off the film in spectacular fashion. When the tables are turned on Steve, the violence that ensues is not for the faint-of-heart. Graphic and gory, the sudden shift to slasher-movie aesthetic, even though it’s been telegraphed, is telegraphed. Once limbs start to fly and blood is splattered by the gallon, “Fresh” reveals itself to be just another horror film, one that would be labeled as “misogynist” were it made by a male director.
Cave tries to have her cake and eat it too, yet in the end her message is obscured by the sort of violence she’s condemning. Instead of eschewing this approach, she embraces the kinds of conventions that give the horror genre a bad name.
Pam says:
I was duped into thinking “Fresh” was a sweet rom-com for the first thirty minutes of the film. But make no mistake, this is a horrifyingly graphic and gruesome movie that will scare away anyone thinking of dating using an app. I give this film and writer Mimi Cave credit for pulling the rug out from under us to reveal the true identity of this story, but unfortunately, Cave plucks out the typical tropes from the slasher horror movie container. There’s torture, bondage, and slicing and dicing that would make the creator of the Veg-O-Matic” run for cover. This shock value beats us over the head for the remainder of the film that makes the log line of the movie — “It’s not for everyone” — an accurate statement.
