‘Forbidden Fruits’: Witchy Mallcore Mayhem is ‘Mean Girls’ Meets ‘The Craft’ [SXSW Review]
Meredith Alloway’s feature debut Forbidden Fruits plays like Mean Girls by way of The Craft for Gen Z. Punchy, witchy, and peppered with catchy 2000s-era needle drops like DJ Sammy’s cover of “Heaven” and the Ying Yang Twins’ “Wait (The Whisper Song),” it feels like the first movie in years that should be inducted into the slumber-party classics Hall of Fame.
Co-written by Alloway and Lily Houghton, and based on Houghton’s play Of the Women Came the Beginning of Sin, and Through Her We All Die, the film follows a coven operating secretly out of Free Eden, a Free People knockoff where the girls—misandrist ringleader Apple (Lili Reinhart), sensitive goth babe Fig (Alexandra Shipp), and bubbly ride-or-die Cherry (Victoria Pedretti, who steals nearly every scene she’s in with her breathy voice and nervous shuffling)—overcharge for trendy clothes (including a tablecloth-turned-makeshift scarf), drink potions made of menstrual blood out of a bedazzled cowboy boot, and communicate with the spirit of Marilyn Monroe.
But after new hire Pumpkin (Lola Tung) is offered a coveted job at the store, the coven suddenly finds itself questioning its sisterhood. Perhaps Apple has gone too far in her hatred of men? They can’t all be that bad, can they? And there’s that weird thing that happened to Pickle (Emma Chamberlain). They’re not allowed to talk about it, but she had it coming, didn’t she? Besides, Pickle isn’t a fruit.
Forbidden Fruits follows in the footsteps of some female rage classics while also carving out a niche of its own with its unique single-location setting, with Free Eden serving as both a refuge and a death trap. With its Mario Bava–inspired color palette, dreamy twinkle lights hanging from the ceiling, and soft, sparkling curtains, the store is a wonderland where the girls can enjoy the fruits of their labor, partying and performing rituals after closing time. But small, well-thought-out details hint at the rot lurking beneath the surface—crushed cans of Cherry Vanilla Olipop and half-eaten pastries litter the break room, severed mannequin heads are frozen mid-laugh (or scream), and the mirrors in the fitting room reveal that the inspirational neon signage actually reads something much more sinister backward.
While the production design establishes the film’s hyper-feminine, distorted universe, the dialogue really gives Forbidden Fruits its bite. Though Diablo Cody (Lisa Frankenstein, Jennifer’s Body, Juno) serves only as a producer here, her influence is easy to detect in the film’s extremely quotable dialogue, with the girls tossing off bangers like “I have a really bad case of main character syndrome,” “Coffee makes me vom,” and, “Do you have sand in your ass crack? Because you are giving beach, babe.”
The film gradually reveals that their breezy retail banter—including their habit of punctuating nearly all their sentences with “babe”—is also a kind of spell, one that keeps the coven bound together, even when the cost of belonging starts to become deadly. When Pumpkin is called to the office to talk about chino pants with her supervisor, Apple quickly realizes it’s code for something else. Either someone actually didn’t teach her how to fold them properly (“Chino pants are a very awkward length,” quips Cherry), or one of the girls has revealed too much.
Forbidden Fruits asks us to question sisterhood and reflect on toxic friendships and the pressure young women face to belong and be accepted, but none of these ideas are explored with the depth or nuance they deserve. Apple controlling Cherry’s schedule, insulting the girls’ personalities, and possibly being the reason why Pickle lost her mind isn’t enough for the girls to question her authority. Instead, the film makes the head-scratching decision to make Apple’s hatred of men the problem. Pumpkin is shocked to discover that the girls can only communicate with men via emojis and that having a boyfriend might threaten their status in the group. But when we discover where Apple’s resentment comes from, it’s hard not to understand her motives. What was that one tweet? If your dad traumatizes you, traumatize him back?
One of the most interesting aspects of the film is that the coven’s magic might not even be real at all. But whether the magic is real or not almost doesn’t matter, because the girls’ actions still carry very real consequences, and that’s where the horror comes in—as Apple warns the girls early on in the film, they should never take the escalator while wearing skinny heels. And they should probably be careful with X-ACTO knives, acrylic nails, and meat cleavers. And what about that glass ceiling?
Despite its muddy messaging, Forbidden Fruits is a fun, candy-colored, mallcore fever dream that speaks to Gen Z’s fascination with 2000s aesthetics, conversations about girlhood, and all things metaphysical. You don’t get to experience paradise without a little bloodshed, babe.
Forbidden Fruits premieres March 16 at the 2026 SXSW Festival and will be released in theaters on March 27, 2026.
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Forbidden Fruits
Summary
Despite muddy messaging, Forbidden Fruits is a fun, mallcore fever dream that speaks to Gen Z’s fascination with 2000s aesthetics, conversations about girlhood, and all things metaphysical.
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