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MOVIE OF THE WEEK March 27, 2026: FORBIDDEN FRUITS

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Like Mean Girls by way of Heathers, Jawbreaker, and The Craft, Meredith Alloway’s stylish, buzzy dark horror comedy Forbidden Fruits takes a critical look at the power dynamics of female friendship — with healthy doses of witchcraft and gore tossed in for good measure. Taking place almost entirely in a Texas mall, it also skewers the impact of influencer culture on everything from fashion trends to slang to coffee orders.

Alloway’s script, which she co-wrote with Lily Houghton based on Houghton’s play Of the woman came the beginning of sin and through her we all die, introduces audiences to a trio of impeccably groomed, impossibly cool young women who work at “it” clothing store Free Eden. Queen bee Apple (Lili Reinhart) wields fierce control over her acolytes, bubbly Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) and not-as-tough-as-she-seems Fig (Alexandra Shipp). When Fig finds out that the new girl pushing soft pretzels at the food court is named Pumpkin (Lola Tung), she’s sure that it’s fate and promptly brings her to meet Apple.

Before long, Pumpkin is part of the crew, selling overpriced accessories to customers who are desperate to be trendy by day and participating in witchy rituals in the staff room by night. But she’s also clearly skeptical, suspicious of Apple and her hold over Fig and Cherry. Apple, for her part, seems motivated by a fierce belief that all men are awful and that women can only count on each other, her sleek facade perhaps masking serious trauma. As the characters’ bonds and power structure are tested, secrets are revealed, and things get bloody.

Alloway elicits strong performances from her core cast, all of whom seem to relish their roles; they’re fully committed to their parts and to the characters’ dynamics (not to mention their fab wardrobes). Forbidden Fruits isn’t the first movie to take a satirical approach to the complicated nature of friendship between women, and it certainly won’t be the last, but its glossy look and tongue-in-cheek tone make it a memorable addition to the “mean girl horror” subgenre. — Betsy Bozdech

Team #MOTW’s comments:

Leslie Combemale Forbidden Fruits is a film that will have a lot of female heads nodding, regardless of age. We’ve all either known, been, or avoided mean girls. Gratefully, they, in large part, weren’t actual witches. In fact, real wicca’s first tenet is “an it harm none”, so the witches of Forbidden Fruits are definitely, (and intentionally) doing wicca wrong. As violent and serious as the movie can get in parts, it’s still less cautionary tale and more entertaining hoot. Whether it succeeds at the box office or not, mark my words. It WILL live on as a cult-y pulp-y favorite. Read full review.

Jennifer Merin Fresh from its buzzy preview at SXSW, Forbidden Fruits is a spoofy and slyly stylish horror comedy. The story centers on four 20-something fashion passion witches — Apple, Cherry, Fig and newly recruited Pumpkin — whose coven is based in the basement of a shopping mall. The characters are amusingly bizarre and much of the plot is enjoyable silliness that revolves around the history and hierarch of the fruity group who consider Marilyn Monroe their goddess. Horror trope gore, ridiculously over the top, is saved until towards the end of the film when the coven is shattered and intergenerational trauma is referenced. Were Forbidden Fruits set in an amusement park instead of a shopping mall, this quirky film would be the roller coaster. Just go along for the ride and let the screams come when they may.

Sandie Angulo Chen: Forbidden Fruits, the feminist horror comedy directed and co-written by Meredith Alloway, is like a witchy, Gen-Z Mean Girls. Based on Lily Houghton’s play Of the woman came the beginning of sin and through her we all die, the genre-bending movie is bitingly clever and features strong performances from all four members of the Free People-like retail store: Lili Reinhart, Alexandra Shipp, Victoria Pedretti, and Lola Tung of The Summer I Turned Pretty fame. Produced by Diablo Cody, the film is reminiscent of her filmography, particularly Jennifer’s Body, and its dark themes about (toxic) female friendship, sexuality, and obsession.

Loren King One of the most engaging aspects of Forbidden Fruits is its perfect setting for horror comedy centered on four young women: a Dallas shopping mall with its retro vibe, catty food court and all the allure and sterility of teen-centered consumerist charm. The four young women at the heart of the film work at an emporium called Free Eden and have control of the place including after hours supernatural shenanigans when the shuttered store becomes their lair. The cast of “fruits” —leader Lili Reinhart’s Apple and her sidekicks Fig (Alexandra Shipp) and Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) — make the most of this campy Mean Girls meets The Craft mashup. It’s Fig who recruits the curious new girl Pumpkin (Lola Tung) from her pretzel hawking to join them at Free Eden, setting both subtle sapphic and more overt witchy behavior into motion. Directed by Meredith Alloway from a screenplay she co-wrote with Lily Houghton, Forbidden Fruits has enough head-scratching wackiness and absurdist horror that it won’t be for everyone. But the quartet driving the action proves the adage to beware of young girls, especially when they’re this self-possessed and in charge at the mall.

Liz Whittemore Meredith Alloway’s deliciously campy horror comedy Forbidden Fruits follows three witchy retail queen bees and the new co-worker who dares to defy the clique and its hierarchy. Alloway and co-writer Lily Houghton deliver a cheeky mashup of Mean Girls and The Craft. In the Forbiden Fruits story, Cherry, Fig, and newcomer Pumpkin are dominated by Apple, but Pumpkin suspects that something rotten is in their shopping mall coven. Read Cate Marquis Mall fashion boutique “Free Eden” is the home base for a clique of three “mean girls” who all have fruit names and form a self-described witches coven at a Texas mall, in director Meredith Alloway’s silly yet clever take on the classic horror film crossed with Mean Girls. When “queen bee” Apple (Lili Reinhart) recruits a new girl, Pumpkin (Lola Tung) to join Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) and Fig (Alexandra Shipp) in their supposedly feminist clique, Cherry declares their fashion seasons are complete, as the girls focus on fashion, carrying out rituals and enforcing rules, like any other teen girls’ clique – until things go wrong. There is more going on here than meets to eye, as Alloway plays around with our assumptions, horror tropes, and plenty of plot twists in this spoofy horror romp.

FILM DETAILS:

Title: Forbidden Fruits

Director: Meredith Alloway

Release Date: March

Running Time: 103 minutes

Language: English

Screenwriters: Meredith Alloway, Lily Houghton

Lead Performers: Lili Reinhart, Victoria Pedretti, Alexandra Shipp, Lola Tung, Gabrielle Union

Distribution Company: IFC FILMS, SHUDDER

AWFJ Movie of the Week Panel Members: Sandie Angulo Chen, Betsy Bozdech, Leslie Combemale, Loren King, Cate Marquis, Jennifer Merin, Nell Minow, Liz Whittemore

Previous #MOTW Selections

Other Movies Opening This Week

Edited by Jennifer Merin

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Jennifer Merin

Jennifer Merin is the Film Critic for Womens eNews and contributes the CINEMA CITIZEN blog for and is managing editor for AWFJ.org, the online magazine of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, of which she is President. She has served as a regular critic and film-related interviewer for The New York Press and About.com. She has written about entertainment for USA Today, The L.A. Times, US Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Endless Vacation Magazine, NY Daily News, New York Post, SoHo News and other publications. After receiving her MFA from Tisch School of the Arts (Grad Acting), Jennifer performed at the O'Neill Theater Center's Playwrights Conference, Long Wharf Theater, American Place Theatre and LaMamma, where she worked with renown Japanese director, Shuji Terayama. She subsequently joined Terayama's theater company in Tokyo, where she also acted in films. Her journalism career began when she was asked to write about Terayama for The Drama Review. She became a regular contributor to the Christian Science Monitor after writing an article about Marketta Kimbrell's Theater For The Forgotten, with which she was performing at the time. She was an O'Neill Theater Center National Critics' Institute Fellow, and then became the institute's Coordinator. While teaching at the Universities of Wisconsin and Rhode Island, she wrote "A Directory of Festivals of Theater, Dance and Folklore Around the World," published by the International Theater Institute. Denmark's Odin Teatret's director, Eugenio Barba, wrote his manifesto in the form of a letter to "Dear Jennifer Merin," which has been published around the world, in languages as diverse as Farsi and Romanian. Jennifer's culturally-oriented travel column began in the LA Times in 1984, then moved to The Associated Press, LA Times Syndicate, Tribune Media, Creators Syndicate and Arcamax Publishing. She's been news writer/editor for ABC Radio Networks, on-air reporter for NBC, CBS Radio and for Westwood One's America In the Morning. She is a member of the Critics Choice Association in the Film, Documentary and TV branches and a voting member of the Black Reel Awards. For her AWFJ archive, type "Jennifer Merin" in the Search Box (upper right corner of screen).