Mark Reviews Movies: FRESH (2022)

Fresh, Searchlight Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 3, 2022

The central idea of Fresh is either a blunt metaphor that gets in the way of the movie's actual point or the foundation of a sincere, creepy thriller that oversteps its significance. Either way, the movie comes across as a mishmash of tones, approaches, and purposes.

It starts with relative innocence, as we watch Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) try to look for a good—or, at least, not-entirely-terrible—man in the world of online dating. Her most recent date is with a self-absorbed guy (played by Brett Dier) who's late for their dinner outing, isn't interested in a thing she has to say, displays more than a hint of racism while talking to the server, and, even though he made certain Noa knew they'd be splitting the bill, takes all of the leftovers for himself. The final notes of the evening have him suggesting they go out again, her saying they don't seem too compatible, and him responding with increasingly aggressive insults.

Yes, this is how things have been going for Noa, and there's an amusing but unpleasant honesty to how screenwriter Lauryn Kahn sums up the despair, harassment, and quiet fear of the modern-day dating scene for women in these introductory scenes. While Noa can receive some constant sympathy and support from her best friend Mollie (Jojo T. Gibbs), the young woman does want a romantic relationship.

Enter Steve (Sebastian Stan). They meet at a grocery store, and he's charming but awkward, handsome but funny, and assertive but with a seemingly genuine sense of embarrassment about asking for her phone number. Noa is intrigued, and then, she can't stop thinking about him. When he texts her to ask her out for drinks, Noa accepts.

There's barely a hint of what's to come in the scenes of grounded, whirlwind romance that follow. The two talk with some humor, self-awareness, and sincerity about their pasts and current lives, and Steve seems to be, not only a not-entirely-terrible guy, but also a good and kind and thoughtful one, who also happens to make good money as a reconstructive surgeon. Noa falls quickly and hard, and while Mollie's suspicions about someone who seems this too-good-to-be-true definitely strike us as a bit of foreshadowing, Noa doesn't seem to care.

She and Steve are going to take a trip together, although the destination is a surprise and, whoops, they'll have leave the next day after a stay at his house, which happens to be in the middle of the woods without any cellphone service. There it is.

All of that is simply a prologue—and a seemingly unessential one, given how far removed any sense of normalcy is from the proceeding material—for what's to come. To detail what follows the major twist of the plot and the story's intentions might undermine the surprise, but then again, it becomes clear that Kahn and director Mimi Cave are mostly out to continually shock us.

It all begins as a straightforward abduction thriller, in which Noa is imprisoned and must find a way to escape her captor. Matters, though, quickly become much darker and more discomforting when it's revealed that Noa's abductor wants her for her meat. She's not the first or, currently, the only one in this situation, either.

Structurally, all of this pretty standard. Noa connects with or plays mind games on her captor, and while it's fairly clear that the latter is happening, the movie's tone fluctuates so severely between terror (a couple scenes of non-consensual surgery and plenty of amputated human body parts being sliced, cooked, and eaten) and dark humor (peppy music to accompany the horrific images and no small number of cannibalism puns) that it undermines the potential suspense. Meanwhile, Mollie begins searching for her missing friend and uncovers a different part of what Steve has been hiding (A former lover, played by Dayo Okeniyi, of hers helps—but only to a certain point, which makes another point about trusting any man). His normal life seems perfectly ordinary on the surface, and whatever that means about Ann (Charlotte Le Bon), his partner in that regular life who may or may not know about those secrets, is dismissed for a couple of not-too-surprising twists.

The abduction and cannibalism angles of this tale surely have some underlying meaning about how much men take from women (quite literally, in this scenario) and how much of that women are willing to accept (There's Ann, most obviously, but some other prisoners have come to accept their fate to some degree). Clearly, the filmmakers believe the shock and horror of the story's most extreme elements will emphasize the message of Fresh, but along with the movie's uncertain and shifting tone, they're mostly a distraction from the point.

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