The campy supernatural tale Forbidden Fruits is, as I’m told the kids say, a lot. Adapted from the 2019 Lily Houghton play *big breath* Of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die, the big-screen treatment opts for a snappier title but maintains the verbose spirit of the source material. The snarky screenplay, co-written by Houghton with director Meredith Alloway, is littered with allusions to female-facing millennial mainstays like The Devil Wears Prada and Mean Girls. That the film’s narrative so obviously mirrors the latter at the outset seems to be by design, luring us in with a familiar story of yore to develop into something more dangerous and deadly. While it never reaches the subversiveness of titles like Heathers or The Virgin Suicides, it’s a pastiche ripe with themes about how hard it can be for young women to stick together.
Forbidden Fruits takes place almost entirely within the confines of fictional Texas shopping center Highland Place Mall, where the supercilious Apple (Lili Reinhart) and her fellow Free Eden employees Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) and Fig (Alexandra Shipp) rule the roost. When they arrive at the food court, other mall workers scurry to leave them at what now becomes the popular kids’ table. It doesn’t quite scare off Pumpkin (Lola Tung), a new hire at the Auntie Anne’s fill-in Sister Salt’s, who offers them pretzel bite samples and piques their interest in the process. Pumpkin subsequently applies to work at their Urban Outfitters-like store and when she passes the interview with flying colors, she not only joins their clique but also their secret coven, where they perform rituals in the basement of Free Eden after-hours.
It’s when things get witchy — and a word that rhymes with “witchy” — that feminist fable Forbidden Fruits feels free to let its freak flag fly. Once Pumpkin is in the group, she discovers how controlling Apple is over Cherry and Fig’s lives, blocking off their personal calendars for them and casually lobbing barbs like, “that’s another unattractive quality we need to work on.” She also learns of a hex that befell ex-employee Pickle (Emma Chamberlain), so catatonic as a result of the witch’s curse that she’s seen literally banging her head against windows of outlets in the mall. There’s obviously something rotten at the root of this supposed paradise atop Apple’s guise of sisterhood and the more time Pumpkin spends with the trio, the more resolved she feels to expose the extent of the performative friendship they have in place.
Diablo Cody, who penned high school-set comedies Juno and Jennifer’s Body, serves as executive producer here and it’s fair to say that if she had written a reboot 30 years removed from The Craft, it could’ve come out very similarly to Forbidden Fruits. Even though this movie is seemingly set in the present day, it certainly maintains the late-aughts veneer of Cody’s most notable efforts; depicting a shopping mall as bustling in 2026 is arguably more anachronistic than featuring smartphones in a film set 20 years ago. What feels fresh in this film is how it angles against Apple’s brand of false feminism, wherein she can assert poisonous control over her friends’ lives by labelling any male interloper as part of the patriarchy. She feels so threatened by the suggestion that these ladies talk through their feelings at therapy that she forces them to confess their sins to the spirit of “ultimate femme martyr” Marilyn Monroe in a designated dressing room.
It may be too much to ask Forbidden Fruits to be more of anything but I wish it had committed to the edginess of its very first scene — involving a hot latte and a lecherous man’s crotch — in its storytelling. Meredith Alloway also delays the peripheral horror trappings to the degree that the violent final 20 minutes and mid-credit scene almost feel like they belong in a different movie. But the film’s more crucial aspect is the satirical heightened reality that she and her quartet of young actresses establish before the conclusion. Everyone here is on the same page aesthetically and tonally, down to Lili Reinhart’s ostentatious amber wig that seems to have been snatched from Nicole Kidman’s character in Practical Magic. Just as fashion is never finished, films like Forbidden Fruits about women navigating the tricky territory of burgeoning bonds will always be en vogue.
Score – 3.5/5
New movies coming this weekend:
Beginning in theaters on Wednesday is The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, an animated adventure starring Chris Pratt and Anya Taylor-Joy, continuing the saga of the Super Mario Bros as they team up with Yoshi and Princess Rosalina to take on Bowser’s son Bowser Jr.
Also coming to theaters is The Drama, a black comedy starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, in which a couple’s relationship is shaken days before their wedding when one partner discovers unsettling truths about the other.
Premiering on Hulu is Pizza Movie, a college comedy starring Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone, following a pair of psychoactively-inhibited students who face an unexpectedly epic journey when they must navigate two flights of stairs to retrieve their pizza delivery.
Reprinted by permission of Whatzup