At Free Eden, a Dallas mall boutique, four young women sell expensive clothes, burn sage, and run secret gatherings after hours. Forbidden Fruit, a horror comedy from first-time feature director Meredith Alloway, is currently in theaters.
The film, based on playwright Lily Horton’s stage play “Of the Woman Came the Beginning of Sin, and Through Her We All Die,” stars Lili Reinhart as Apple, Victoria Pedretti as Cherry, Alexandra Shipp as Fig, and Laura Tung as Pumpkin. In Free Eden, Apple secretly runs a witch-like femme cult with Cherry and Fig after hours in the basement of a boutique. When new employee Pumpkin arrives and challenges their performative sisterhood, the women are forced to confront their own toxicity. The film premiered at SXSW earlier this month and has already drawn comparisons to Mean Girls, The Craft and Jawbreaker, with mixed feelings, although the cast and filmmakers are happy to claim that lineage.
“We pitched this song as ‘Mean Girls,’ but it’s a slasher,” Horton told Variety, citing ‘Jennifer’s Body’ as a guiding influence. “It was like that before its time. We can only hope and dream of creating that kind of energy.”
The film was personal for Houghton from the beginning. “I always knew that was the way I spoke, but it was always dismissed as too girly, stupid, stupid,” she says. “We wanted to show those voices and what was bubbling beneath them.” Horton wrote the original play, drawing directly from his own life, when he was 21, fresh out of college and working in a retail store after his father died. “I went back to my childhood and used it as a means of protection,” she says.
Laura Tung (left) as Pumpkin, Victoria Pedretti as Cherry, Alexandra Shipp as Fig, and Lili Reinhart as Apple in “Forbidden Fruit.”
In the film, Reinhart’s Apple is a woman who is completely convinced that she is the ultimate feminist. “She thinks of herself as the ultimate girl’s girl, so ultimately she doesn’t do any of that,” Reinhardt said, adding that while she can accept praise, she has no idea what to do with actual love. “She doesn’t get it from her family, so she has to get it from other people. And the way she deals with it is through control.”
At the heart of the film is the “serpent in the garden,” a Biblical motif to which the story returns again and again. That tension is evident in Ton’s Pumpkin, who appears as a skeptic, though not entirely innocent. “She’s kind of a snake,” Tan says. “Because if she hadn’t come, maybe paradise wouldn’t have collapsed, or at least it wouldn’t have collapsed so quickly or so violently.” But deep down, Pumpkin longs for something more, a sense of belonging and sisterhood. “She wants to believe in the goodness of this group. But sometimes wanting something so badly opens everything up,” Tan added.
Alexandra Shipp as Fig and Victoria Pedretti as Cherry in “Forbidden Fruit.”
Sabrina Lantos
Pedretti’s Cherry is the serious heart of the coven, curious and loyal, which often drives her crazy. “Her loyalty to Apple goes deeper than self-preservation,” Pedretti says. “That’s exactly what makes it so hard to watch.” Figg, on the other hand, has completely drunk the Kool-Aid, Shipp explains.
Alloway says whether any of the magic actually works is not the right question. “It’s like saying, ‘Is God real? Or rather, do these characters believe in God?'” Horton intended to leave it open. “I hope people see this movie and think about magic in a completely different way.”
After all, “Forbidden Fruit” is a story about what women do when men are unimportant. “We’ve never had a good scene with each other,” says Tung. “It feels like we’re always competing for one guy.” In the movie, that’s not the case. Alloway is quick to point out that none of this demonizes these women. The way she sees it, “these women are trying to build a garden out of cement blocks.” Malls, boutiques, social architecture, those are the adversaries.
“Forbidden Fruit” stars Laura Tung as Pumpkin and Lili Reinhart as Apple.
Sabrina Lantos
For all its slasher elements, “Forbidden Fruits” isn’t interested in pitting the girls against each other as heroes and villains. The filmmakers argue that the real threat is the world they are trying to survive in.
“Villains are expectations for women,” Alloway says. “This is a capitalist system. It’s literally a shopping mall.”
Horton agrees. “If such a system didn’t exist, they wouldn’t be dancing in the forest, summoning goddesses, and killing each other.”
