Forbidden Fruits

dir: Meredith Alloway

2026

I don’t know what I was expecting when I sat down on a Thursday night to watch something trashy, but it wasn’t this. I had read reviews or seen the flick mentioned in the same breath as certain classics like Heathers, The Craft, Jawbreaker, the non-musical Mean Girls, and, come on, surely they were taking the piss?

This flick is… about a group of young women who work at a clothing store at a mall, and they are held in awe or at least their leader is feared by all. They have names related to fruits, hence they are the Forbidden Fruits of the title. Their leader is, of course, Apple (Lili Reinhart). They work in Free Eden. Apple, Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) and Fig (Alexandra Shipp) are the in group.

If you’ve worked in a mall, or been to a mall, immediately you can see how implausible this scenario is. The histrionics of a redhead and her hangers on wouldn’t even register three shops down, let alone throughout the place. Malls have hundreds of employees. Thousands, tens of thousands of people can come through on given days. Who has time to care?

However, you work with the premise you have, not the premise someone else came up with after the fact. A new devotee calling herself Pumpkin (Lola Tung) insinuates her way into the group in order to get close to Apple.

Pumpkin are fruits. I’ve never thought of it before, but they are. Wikipedia confirms it. Apple seems excited to have a new devotee/slave, and inducts her into their witchy coven through a fairly gross ritual.

As you can probably imagine without wanting to watch any of it or a trailer, Apple is Regina George / Nancy, and is really mean to the others and they’re all terrified of earning her disfavour. But for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why. The extension of this dynamic / template beyond school doesn’t feel like it makes a lot of sense. You don’t have to tell me about how people’s insecurities and group dynamics in a workplace could end up leading to a group of idiots being coerced into doing something incredibly stupid (like voting for One Nation), but I could never figure out whilst watching why any of them would put up with Apple’s bullshit. Fig is a college graduate (in astrophysics no less) so why is she even there?

Cherry is perhaps not as gifted intellectually (okay she’s the straight Gretchen analogue who keeps trying to make fetch happen), but why is she putting up with all this abuse regardless? Her feelings of loss and loneliness upon losing her family in a fire couldn’t possibly be assuaged by being continuously abused and controlled by this horrible person.

Apple seems less a character and more a bundle of hateful tics expressed through contemporary feel good wellness metaphors and tropes, awkwardly written and often awkwardly delivered (giving it that Diablo Cody feel, where trying to capture a certain kind of contemporary vernacular immediately makes your script sound like a period piece). Her motive, though, is clear. She wants people to control.

She especially seems horrified by any of her coterie having sex, she really frowns upon that. Does she want to have sex with them herself, or does she just feel insecure when she’s not the focus of all their attentions?

Apple focuses most of her ire and control on Cherry, who we assume is the weakest and therefore an easy target and example to keep the others in line. The most frequently repeated remark she makes towards Cherry is that she’s always trying to be the main character, or that she is delusional because she has main character syndrome.

The first time I heard it, I thought “oh how contemporary (five years ago)). But the third time, I again thought nothing of it. But when the film ended, and I found myself confused and irritated, ready to write off the whole experience as an almost okayish film ruined by a terrible out of nowhere ending, it hit me. I don’t know shit.

Her statement isn’t just aimed at Cherry to keep grinding her down and keep her pliable/obedient. It’s aimed at us, because the flick tricks us into thinking we know who the main character is.

Pumpkin really seems like she’s scheming in some way, like she’s maybe trying to play the two loyal courtiers off of each other and to undermine the queen bee. We will not know for most of the flick what her agenda is, only that she’s unlikely to be a true believer in wiccan rituals or women supporting women by drinking unholy concoctions that may or may not include the contents of people’s underwear.

I know, gross. Lip service is paid and spent never trying to be convincing about why these women are in this toxic relationship, even as it points to some of the reasons that may have lead them there. Loneliness, lack of family, lack of meaning in this age of social media led mindlessness and influencer influenced vapidity. The flick almost makes a point about mindless consumerism – after all, it’s set in a mall – but it doesn’t dare risk saying anything meaningful about anything, let alone late stage capitalism.

It’s also set in a mall in Dallas, Texas, but doesn’t do anything with that either. In fact, other than pulling a fancy trick at the end, which isn’t really a plot twist, and is more of a telegraphed gag, it doesn’t really do much with any of its constituent parts or its set up.

Even though it’s based on a play, it’s not aiming at any profundity that I could detect. It doesn’t even manage to say anything about female relationships, other than a toxic, self-centred woman might amass herself a group of followers, and then blow the group up when it no longer pleases her, and move on to another group, where she’ll presumably do the same eventually.

Toxic people are the worst, aren’t they?

In the end we find out that Pumpkin and Apple are connected in some way not immediately obvious, nor after the fact, and I’m not going to say it makes any sense, but I find it hard to raise any criticism towards Pumpkin, since she’s played by the effortlessly charming actor who also plays the lead character Belly from The Summer I Turned Pretty. Casting her here is another trick, given the expectations casting her might bring for some people.

It’s not an explanation that makes a lot of sense and its resolution is far from satisfying, mostly because the film scams us so thoroughly that, even you admire the technique, you’re still the one who’s been fleeced.

This is no genre-establishing touchstone for a new generation of disaffected young people who’ll never own homes and who will have to survive but not thrive in the rising gig economy. This will just be… yet another flick that will disappear into the ether, barely watched and barely remembered even by jerks like me.

I will admit one idea or aspect I found endearing is that Apple compels the others to occasionally go meekly into a fitting room and confess their sins to a mirror, while almost confessing to their goddess, being Marilyn Monroe. Because of all the trials and tribulations she suffered at the hands of so many appalling and powerful men, she, or should I write She, is the meant to be the inspiration for these women who are meant to be sisters doing it for themselves.

Inspiration from the most unlikely sources. It’s truly a self-serving mangling of history, but I certainly enjoy listening to anyone champion the concept of justice for Marilyn.

I could also almost give the flick an extra point for using on its soundtrack one of the nastiest, most vicious tracks in the history of filthy songs, a song so filthy I’m not even going to mention it because I’m so horrified that they used it, so even I was shocked. And it obviously takes a lot to shock me. But none of that pre-disposes me towards giving this flick a pass. It’s very much less than the sum of its parts.

5 sometimes fruit is forbidden because it’s so poisonous out of 10

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“My job doesn't define me, my hotness and my personality do.” – a burden many of us carry - Forbidden Fruit

https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1592052505/