Forbidden Fruits: Thriller Mixes Mean Girls & The Craft
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- Forbidden Fruits is a satirical thriller described as a cross between “Mean Girls” and “The Craft,” focusing on four young women in a Texas mall boutique.
- Meredith Alloway directs the film (her first‑time director) and co‑wrote the script with Lily Houghton.
- Lili Reinhart plays Apple, the ringleader of the coven, a cold vixen who controls her friends with feminist rhetoric and a Marilyn Monroe “confessional” motif.
- Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) is one of the fruit‑named women, portrayed as sensual yet sharp‑tongued, while Fig (Alexandra Shipp) is skeptical and Pumpkin (Lola Tung) is the newcomer recruited by Apple.
- Bryan Adams’ “Heaven” is used as an EDM cover for a dance scene, underscoring the film’s pop‑culture aesthetic.
- Apple espouses a conspiracy that JFK murdered Marilyn Monroe because she couldn’t be controlled, using this narrative to justify her anti‑male witchcraft.
- Apple leads a hex on a target that appears to work, propelling the film into suspenseful, violent, yet witty territory.
Why it matters: The film’s blend of dark comedy, feminist witchcraft, and pop‑culture fashion gives young‑women audiences a fresh lens on power dynamics, while the industry gains a bold, stylized entry that challenges conventional teen‑movie formulas. It also foregrounds progressive anger as inseparable from fashion, suggesting a cultural shift where feminist critique is woven into everyday style, reshaping how studios market teen‑focused narratives.
