‘Forbidden Fruits’ Review: The Salesgirls Are Witches in a Depraved Satirical Thriller That’s Like ‘Mean Girls’ Meets ‘The Craft’ Touched with Something Darker

If you see one spicy depraved satirical thriller this year that’s a cross between “Mean Girls” and “The Craft” and something far darker, by all means make that movie “Forbidden Fruits.” It’s an agreeably sharp-witted black-as-midnight comedy about four young women from Texas who work in a clothing-and-knickknack boutique at the Highland Place mall. They aren’t just friends; they’re part of a coven. Does that mean they’re actually witches? Maybe, maybe not.

What we can say for sure is that they’re shopping junkies obsessed with signifiers of their femininity (skimpy chemises, bracelets with charms, designer cupcakes), that their banter is peppered with the kind of slang (gorge, perf, vom) you’d expect from a movie that has Diablo Cody as one of the producers, that at one point they do a willowy dance to an EDM cover of Bryan Adams’ “Heaven,” and that three of them are under the spell of their ringleader, Apple (Lili Reinhart), a cold vixen in long straight red hair and stiletto heels who controls their every move with agendas of her own.

Each of the girls is named for a different fruit. In addition to Apple, there’s Cherry (Victoria Pedretti), who in earlier age would have been the “ditz,” because she’s got a sensual innocence (she spends every Wednesday afternoon boinking a different dude from the food court), but she’s actually as sharp-tongued as the rest of them. There’s Fig (Alexandra Shipp), the most serious and skeptical. And there’s the mysterious newbie, Pumpkin (Lola Tung), who’s working at a candied-pretzel store called Sister Salt’s when Apple taps her to join the coven (though she doesn’t put it quite that way). She leads Pumpkin into the girls’ shared immersion in the ways of fashion and jargon and backbiting, their filtering of life through a scrim of pop, and the way that Apple layers her “sisterly” directives with an academic feminist righteousness. That, in fact, is what makes the film original — its perception that for these girls, progressive anger is now inseparable from fashion. 

If they are in fact witches, what’s the witchcraft about? In comedies like “The Craft” or “Practical Magic,” witchcraft has mostly been a free-floating expression of female power. But in “Forbidden Fruits,” Apple, the group’s Regina George, uses her status as head witch to enforce her rules about the way things should be. (You’re only allowed to text a dude using emojis.) Periodically, she’ll send one of her comrades into the dressing room that serves as a “confessional,” where the one you’re confessing to is the spirit of Marilyn Monroe. Why Marilyn? Because Apple considers her the ultimate female martyr, and says “no one could control her, not even the president.” Apple has a JFK assassination theory about Marilyn. According to the theory, Marilyn was murdered — by JFK — precisely because she couldn’t be controlled. In Apple’s eyes, the ghost of Marilyn now hovers over every dance of power between a man and a woman.

Cherry, promiscuous and confused, actually seems to have a bit of Marilyn in her. But what of the others? As Fig pursues a romance, which Apple tries to squelch, we realize that Apple, with her fear and loathing of men, is a witch of the spirit. Yet Lili Reinhart plays her with a diamond-hard smirk and a gleam of perception that lights up the screen. She’s like Parker Posey crossed with Ann-Margret. She has the potential to go far.        

At first, cued by everything in “Forbidden Fruits” that’s reminiscent of those earlier films, we think it’s all for fun: a high-camp giggle trip. But the film’s first-time director, Meredith Alloway (who co-wrote the script with Lily Houghton), has a vision that’s less facile and more contemporary than that. She has made a screw-loose comedy of stylized youth attitudes that doesn’t pretend to be “real,” but it’s also a serious movie that asks: What do young women today want? Love or justice or power? Or all three? And is any one of the three more powerful?

The movie takes a turn into suspense when Apple leads the others in putting a hex on someone, and the hex appears to work. What happens is unnerving, at which point the film passes through a looking glass of fear. There’s something new at work — a cultural hairpin turn — in the way that Apple is made out to be a figure of commanding but toxic damage. “Forbidden Fruits” goes over-the-top into shock and violence (which is staged with great wit), but what drives the movie forward is how it tries to pull its characters out from under the influence of someone whose witchery has made men the enemy. The movie says: It’s time to break that spell.