Forbidden Fruits (Meredith Alloway, 2026)

I'm too old and have no younger people in my life to have the first clue whether this homage/cover/love letter to so many of the girl-centric comedies and horrors from the eighties to the aughts is going to land with people of the age the characters in the film are, but as a movie lover with an appreciation for those films, Forbidden Fruits is a particular and engaging brand of fun.

The camp factor is set to high. Meredith Alloway and Lily Houghton adapt Houghton's play for the screen, and Alloway understands how to use the small budget to contribute to the sense of camp using the setting of a single mall store. It all succeeds on the strength of the performances by its four principal characters. Lili Reinhart, Victoria Pedretti, Alexandra Shipp and Lola Tung are everything the script needs to succeed. Tung is short changed a bit, as the story requires an ambiguity from her character that doesn't give her as many moments to shine, but she's still charismatic.

Forbidden Fruits is a morality play about loneliness leading to performative sisterhood, where it meets the most superficial of wellness culture, witchcraft and girl boss ambition, by way of a broad comedic journey. Seduction, paranoia, deceit, betrayal and blood. It's got it all. It deftly understands the feeling of a joke only family could make. If the cast wasn't as invested in it as they are, a lot of this dialog might fall flat, but in their hands the script shines when it lets it's sincerity and absurdity act in harmony, and the all four of these Fruits understand exactly how to tune their performances for it.

The script, and Alloway's direction understand comedy this broad throughout needs a place to go in the finale, and when Forbidden Fruits eschews what restraint its been holding onto, it explodes. It flirts with horror tropes through the first three acts, but in the finale, Forbidden Fruits consummates that relationship. It's blood is as soaked in camp as its comedy, and Lili Rienhart proves she's a leading woman Hollywood would be doing itself a favor to invest in.

This is baroque comedy about the monstrous results of the most superficial ultra-feminine feminism wielded by the most damaged and deranged of women, and if you can get on board with that, it's a good time due to strong performances.