Female Film Critics 24/375
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.
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Imagine a decidedly adult comedy horror feature that is equal parts Mean Girls, Heathers, and The Craft, and you’ll have a pretty good sense of what’s in store for audiences when they sit down to watch Forbidden Fruits. The film, which is destined to become this generation’s cult classic, is directed by Meredith Alloway, who partnered on the screenplay with playwright and writer/producer Lily Houghton, as adapted from her play Of the Women. Right from the beginning, that sets it apart from its influences.
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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.
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Violent Ends, John-Michael Powell’s neo-western cum Southern Gothic cum revenge crime thriller is formulaic. In a small Ozarks town hit hard by financial woes for the farmers of the area, the Frost family dominated the river-based drug smuggling operations in Arkansas in the 1980s. Three brothers: Donny (Bruce McKinnon), Walt (Ray McKinnon), and Ray (Matt Riedy) all vied for complete control of the operation leading to a schism where Walt took the meth market and Donny the cocaine. Ray was taken off the chess board when he ended up serving a long prison sentence. Bad blood is never forgotten nor cleansed, and the next generation continues the crime legacy.
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Kevin Bacon is one degree of separation from his wife, Kyra Sedgwick, as he co-stars in her directorial theatrical feature debut. Bacon plays a flower farmer who is trying to keep his family’s legacy business alive on Earth while supporting his troubled son Alex’s wish to live on Mars in Space Oddity. Alex says space is safe and so was Sedgwick with her storytelling.
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Kyra Sedgwick’s directorial debut is a charming little film with lofty aspirations. Space Oddity is about a young man named Alex (Kyle Allen) who is preparing for his upcoming trip to Mars. No, he is not an astronaut and, no, this is not a NASA-sanctioned mission. Rather, he has been enlisted by a private group whose legitimacy is questionable at best. But, despite his family’s misgivings, he is determined to leave behind the life he knows for a one way trip to a world no one has ever even visited.
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Asking for It fearlessly takes on the patriarchy, addresses timely issues like racism, homophobia and rape culture and provides a showcase for several LGBTQ+ actors and performers of color. Director Eamon O’Rourke has taken copious cues from Tony Scott’s 2004 cult favorite “Man on Fire,” favoring a flashy visual style that includes frenetic cuts, slashing on-screen text and frequent freeze frames.
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The satisfaction of seeing evil men get their comeuppance is the heartbeat of the edgy revenge film, Asking For It, where a cross-section of women from every background bond to fight the man. Meet the vigilante Cherry Bombers, finding each other and connecting through shared past trauma. Together they vow to eradicate perceived enemies in a road trip revenge thriller with some extraordinarily tragic moments.
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