Channeling the spirits of movies like Mean Girls and The Craft, Forbidden Fruits follows a group of young women working at a mall as they fight over group control, seek belonging, and experiment with withcraft. It’s a whimsical send-up of mall life where a coven operates out of a hip store’s fitting rooms. But director and co-writer Meredith Alloway also keeps a keen eye on the dynamics between the characters, the way they manipulate one another and use their need for friendship into a weapon for punishment. The spookiest parts of the film isn’t witchcraft at all, it’s what we’re capable of doing to each other.
Apple (Lili Reinhart), Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) and Fig (Alexandra Shipp) – a trio collectively known as the Fruits – are the most popular girls at the mall. They work at the trendy store Free Eden, where they hold secret ceremonies and cast spells as part of a coven called Paradise. When a promising new member, Pumpkin (Lola Tung), arrives, the dynamic between the original three shifts as Apple struggles to maintain control. But there’s an ulterior motive to Pumpkin’s decision to join the coven, and the mystery only deepens with questions about what really happened the the group’s last fourth member, Pickle (Emma Chamberlain).
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Based on Lily Houghton’s play, Forbidden Fruits is equal parts group psychology and horror movie twists. Alloway, who co-wrote the screenplay with Houghton, conjures up the bubble world of the Fruits – a realm of overpriced accessories, gingham prints, sequenced boots and questionable spells. Nothing else exists outside of the mall and the tenuous connections between coworkers forced to memorize each other’s coffee orders. Alloway’s candy-colored feature debut loses a bit of steam over the course of the film when Pumpkin searches for answers about Apple, but picks up the pace during the last campy third of the movie.
Each of the Fruits comes with their own personality. Like the mean queen bee Regina George, Apple craves adoration and feels threatened whenever her coworkers don’t bend to her whim. Reinhart portrays Apple with the hair trigger intensity of an insecure control freak with rare flashes of vulnerability when Pumpkin, and by extension the audience, learns the polished front Apple puts on at the mall is an act. Cherry seems modeled after Amanda Seyfried’s character in Mean Girls, not intentionally as cruel as Apple or as conniving as she is, but someone who’s easily bullied into obeying. Pedretti takes on a Marilyn Monroe-esque breathy voice and plays dumb for laughs, but she’s one of the first to plead for some kindness. Although not as easily pushed around, Shipp’s Fig wants so badly to fit in with the Fruits, she keeps her new relationship a secret, a forbidden act of betrayal according to Apple’s rule against talking to boys beyond emojis. As Pumpkin, Tung manuevers these personalities so not to betray her search for the truth behind Apple’s pasr. She first appears eager and excited to fit in, but subtly, Tung and Alloway tease there’s something more to Pumpkin that meets the eye. While the mystery is fun to piece together and add its share of scares, the real treat of “Forbidden Fruits” is rooted in how easy it is to poison our need for friendship.