Line #48 Film/Fresh2022


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7	''Fresh'' is a HorrorComedy film directed by Mimi Cave. It screened at Platform/{{Sundance}} before being picked up by [[Creator/SearchlightPictures Disney]] for a release on March 4, 2022 on Creator/{{Hulu}}.
8
9	Millennial orphan Noa (Creator/DaisyEdgarJones) has trouble finding a likeable man. Her friend Mollie (Jonica T. Gribbs) encourages her to be more outgoing, and when she runs into handsome and charming cosmetic surgeon Steve (Creator/SebastianStan), she goes for it and lets him take her to his cottage for the weekend, only for Steve to reveal he has a...very particular appetite. And then things go wrong. So, so, wrong.
10
11	Not to be confused with ''Film/{{Fresh}}''.
12	----
13	!!Provides examples of:
14	* AffablyEvil: Steve is a total monster, but he is genuinely ''nice'' to Noa throughout, even being charming to her when [[spoiler:he's cutting off her ''ass'']].
15	* AnArmAndALeg: All the victims are slowly dismembered because [[spoiler:the meat tastes better fresh]].
16	* ArcWords:
17	** The exchange: "I love you." "Love you more."
18	** "Give me a smile."
19	* BaitAndSwitch:
20	** Noa takes a picture of Steve while he sleeps, hinting that she's a bit of a creep. She sends it to Mollie, who points out that it's a creepy thing to do. A few scenes later, it turns out she is not the creep in this relationship, when Steve roofies her and chains her to his basement wall.
21	** [[spoiler:When Noa bites his penis off, she smears something white in Steve's face. It is natural to assume that this is semen, but a brief shot of a tube of toothpaste lying on the floor proves that assumption wrong.]]
22	* BeautyIsNeverTarnished:
23	** There is no visible change to Noa's appearance, even after she has spent days, if not weeks, locked in a cellar, chained up, and physically and emotionally tortured.
24	** Penny as well, despite having been in captivity longer and not having Steve's favor like Noa.
25	* BlatantLies: When Noa turns down a second date on account of him negging her and taking her food, Chad claims he was only being polite and calls her a stuck-up bitch.
26	* BreastAttack: It's {{implied\|Trope}} that [[spoiler:Mollie]]'s breasts were cut off [[spoiler:and fed to Noa]].
27	* BunkerWoman: [[spoiler:Steve imprisons women in an adapted multi-room basement or harem of some kind.]]
28	* ButNotTooBi: Mollie mentions that she prefers dating women, but has an ex-boyfriend whom she slightly regrets breaking up with, and is only really seen finding guys cute.
29	* CastingGag:
30	** Daisy Edgar-Jones as a young modern woman struggling with dating a man with unusual sexual appetites? It could be ''Literature/NormalPeople''.
31	** Sebastian Stan's character taking advantage of a girl by [[spoiler:having sex with her just to screw with her]]? Could be ''The Bronze''.
32	* CellPhonesAreUseless: Noa's phone doesn't work as soon as she gets to Steve's place (though it makes sense that he would block it).
33	* CentralTheme: Misogyny. The film opens with the frame of dating gone bad with an asshole who tells Noa she should be more feminine and pretty, and then centers on Steve, a predator who literally commodifies women's bodies as meat and who participates in pettier misogyny (he asks Noa to smile for him in a dire situation, invoking a common sexist microaggression). The film ends with Steve's female victims all rescuing themselves through their teamwork and support, with their male ally, Paul, leaving the scene without confirming they're there to avoid becoming a victim himself. The film also illustrates how women can participate in misogynist oppression through [[spoiler:Ann, a partially-cannibalized victim of Steve's who works with him from time to time for his cannibal network]], and Mollie explicitly declares that women like her are the problem.
34	* ConvenientlyAnOrphan: Subverted. Noa has no living relatives, which makes her a convenient target. None of Steve's women have much family, so it's obviously not that convenient for them.
35	* CreativeClosingCredits: The end credits play over a Baphomet sigil.
36	* DeadpanSnarker: Penny has tendencies toward this, like towards the end, [[spoiler:when Mollie and Noa carry her out of the house after fighting and maiming their captor, Mollie says she was looking for Noa and found Steve, to which Noa apologizes and says "ItsAllMyFault"]]:
37	-->'''Penny:''' ''(flatly)'' You guys are so cute.
38	* DeadManWriting: The woman who wrote in the magazine Steve lets Noa read, though subverted in that she wastes no time announcing that she is dead, presumably because of how obvious that would be.
39	-->If you're reading this, it means he likes you. Use it!
40	* DidNotThinkThisThrough:
41	** Noa's first attempt at escape is just her panicking and trying to break steel chains with her own strength, but then her first planned escape attempt is still just trying to break the steel chains and run away.
42	** Mollie suspects that the man whose house she is in has kidnapped her friend. She tests her theory by calling her Noa's phone. It rings in his pocket, just like she thought it might, confirming her theory...but also immediately endangering her, resulting in Steve and Ann knocking her out immediately after.
43	** For Steve, letting a woman he thinks is a budding cannibal go down on him is a ballsy move to say the least.
44	* EverybodyLaughsEnding: The final shot is of [[spoiler:Noa and Mollie]] laughing at how horrible their situation is.
45	* EvilCripple: [[spoiler:Ann]] is missing a leg and [[spoiler:she occasionally helps Steve with his many crimes]].
46	* {{Foreshadowing}}:
47	** When Noa tells Mollie about Steve, the first thing Mollie says is that [[spoiler:"he's probably married."]] [[spoiler:It's the least of Noa's worries, but he is.]]
48	** When she takes him home, Noa asks if she can get Steve anything to drink -- or eat? Steve, who just turned down sex, replies: "No, just you".
49	** When Noa is having short ribs, Steve declines trying some because [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial he doesn't eat]] "[[ExactWords animals]]", and is suspiciously eager to see Noa eat a lot.
50	* GayBestFriend: A variant. Mollie is bisexual, and she is mostly Noa's best friend whose role is to look for Noa after she gets kidnapped.
51	* GenreSavvy: Paul. He arrives at the cabin in the middle of the woods just as the girls are escaping and Steve is shooting at them. Unfortunately, he misses them, as he remembers what happens when a black guy in a movie tries to enter the abandoned mansion in the middle of nowhere after hearing gunshots, and he drives away.
52	* GivenNameReveal: Paul texts Mollie Steve's full name: Brendan Steven Kemp.
53	* GroinAttack: [[spoiler:Noa pretends to go down on Steve so she can bite his dick off. As a result, he spends maybe a minute screaming before he can follow her.]]
54	* HalfwayPlotSwitch: As the amount of spoilers on the page might indicate, this is not just a cute romantic dramedy. [[spoiler:It's actually a horror movie about Steve's imprisonment of Noa and her continued struggle to survive.]]
55	* HighClassCannibal: Steve is a wealthy doctor who always had a cannibalism fetish, then went into procuring women for "the 1% of the 1%", cutting off their body parts and selling their meat to this sizeable network.
56	* HollywoodHealing:
57	** Although Steve is a doctor so Noa is on a lot of painkillers, she's still able to walk around, sit down, and go down on him after she's had her ass cut off.
58	** Steve [[spoiler:recovers equally quickly after Noa bites off his penis and then still manages to go outside and attack the women]].
59	* HollywoodSatanism: The last scene shows [[spoiler:a group of robed people eating human flesh, then a {{Baphomet}} symbol is shown, implying these are Steve's clients-- Satanists eating human flesh.]]
60	* IKnowYouKnowIKnow: After trying to expose Brendan in front of his wife, Mollie really has no way out of the situation, as both of them take her down for Steve to operate on her.
61	* ImAHumanitarian:
62	** [[spoiler:Brendan Steven "Steve" Kemp.]]
63	** [[spoiler:Noa, albeit only to gain her captor's trust. She's sickened by it in private.]]
64	** A number of elites, or "the 1% of the 1%" as one character describes it.
65	** Presumably [[spoiler:Ann, since he married her]].
66	* ImmediateSelfContradiction: Steve implies that he's a vegetarian by saying he "doesn't eat animals" -- not something you hear from people who are vegetarian for their health -- then follows it up by more-or-less demanding that Noa finish her meat.
67	* IronicDeath: Not death per se, but the meat in the stinger is implied to be [[spoiler:Steve's]], and it's being eaten.
68	* IronicEcho: Steve tells Noa to smile for him several times during her [[spoiler:captivity]]. She says it back to him [[spoiler:right before she shoots him in the face]].
69	* IronicName: When she first tries human meat, Steve tells Noa that the person they're eating was named Hope, and points out the irony. The next dinner date, Noa asks who they're eating, and he replies "Melissa", which is the name of a woman two cells down who has stopped singing to herself lately, so to hide her horror Noa bursts out laughing and declares that she expected the trope to be at work in that she was named "Joy" or something.
70	* KilledOffscreen: Noa is imprisoned while two other women are also being held captive: Penny and Melissa, the latter of whom has already lost her mind. Later, it's indicated Melissa has died since Steve feeds some of her meat to Noa and Noa makes no attempt to free Melissa late in the movie when she gets access to the doors.
71	* LimaSyndrome: Steve does genuinely have feelings for Noa, it just doesn't stop... anything else he does.
72	* LoveMartyr:
73	** [[spoiler:Ann. She aids Steve, and her missing leg implies that she's a former victim. Even when she seems genuinely grateful that he's dead, she still tries to strangle Noa to cover up their cannibal ring.]]
74	** [[spoiler:ZigZagged by Noa, who had genuine feelings for Steve before she found out who he really was. She then pretends to be developing sincere feelings for him as she's aware of his feelings for her, but it's all a lie so she can get into a position where she can bite his penis off.]]
75	* MadDoctor: Steve is a doctor and plastic surgeon [[spoiler:who imprisons, cannibalises, and murders multiple women]].
76	* MeaningfulName:
77	** Noa is a word that means "freed from taboo", and she had better be, the way she goes about saving her and her friends' lives by playing along with Steve's cannibal obsession.
78	** Brendan means "prince" or "king", while Steven means "crown" or "wreath", and he is a narcissist to boot.
79	** Mollie can mean "rebellious", a trait which comes in handy when the police won't look for your kidnapped friend so you have to do it yourself. It can also mean "bitter", and she is the most cynical character.
80	** Paul means "small", and he is the only one to shrink from a confrontation instead of trying to save someone's life.
81	** Penny is usually short for Penelope, the woman who is famous for sitting at home waiting for her man to return. Penny lives a sinister version of this.
82	* MissingWhiteWomanSyndrome:
83	** Invoked by Paul when he argues that Mollie might have a chance at getting real help from the police because Noa is white. Mollie disagrees, feeling she has too little evidence to be taken seriously as a black woman.
84	** PlayedWith by the plot. Steve's surviving victims are two white women, one black woman, and one Asian woman, but his trophy wall (and his walk-in freezer) indicate that most of his victims have been white women, and the vast majority didn't survive or get noticed in their absence.
85	* NiceToTheWaiter: Inverted with Chad, who is condescending and kind of racist to their waitress as the cherry on top of the "awful date" portrait.
86	* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: What tips Mollie off is that text messages from Noa's phone don't ''feel'' like they're from Noa--notably, when she says "Love you", she doesn't get back the usual reply of "Love you more".
87	* PainToTheAss: [[spoiler: Noa has her buttocks harvested by Steve as a punishment for her first escape.]]
88	* PoliceAreUseless: Invoked when Paul suggests Mollie report Noa's disappearance to the cops, arguing that "she's white, isn't she?" by Mollie laughing at the suggestion.
89	* {{Pun}}: When Steve serves Noa human breast meat, she points out that he "saved the breast for last".
90	* RealMenCook: To ease her fears about the prospects of being locked in a cellar and gradually fed to cannibals until she dies, Steve tells Noa he'll cook for her, which he surmises no one has ever done for her. When she expresses curiosity about his culinary preferences, he cooks her a meal.
91	* RedIsViolent: Most scenes have a strong red ColorMotif: the red lighting in the bar where Mollie is, the red light at the boxing gym, and Noa's red sweater when she goes with Steve being just a few examples.
92	* RuleOfThree:
93	** Steve makes Noa guess what the drink tastes like three times ([[spoiler:to get her to take another sip]]).
94	** Steve serves Noa three [[spoiler:cannibal meals: Hope, Melissa, and Mollie]].
95	* ScrewThisImOutOfHere: Paul ''almost'' comes to Mollie's rescue, but decides to leave at the last minute, feeling unsure he's at the right place and being resolved against becoming a victim of the gunshots he's hearing because he's a black man.
96	* SerialKiller: Steve is both the Hedonistic and the Cannibalistic kind: he eats his victims, but he sells the flesh as well, and he's actually not that happy with the killing part (he says), but [[SarcasmMode it's a sad fact that if you remove enough flesh from a human they die]].
97	* SexEqualsLove: Steve seduces women to get them to come to his cabin alone, but it's more or less stated he doesn't have sex with all of them. When Noa asks him why he had sex with her, he tells her that he "likes" her, and so begins his apparent genuine affection for her.
98	* ShoutOut:
99	** While Mollie and Noa discuss Noa's love life, they mention being "indoctrinated" about men by [[WesternAnimation/TheLittleMermaid1989 Ariel]] and [[WesternAnimation/BeautyAndTheBeast Belle]].
100	** Penny thinks it's unlikely that she's hallucinating Noa, because she doesn't think her subconscious would have named her imaginary friend "Noa", but rather Creator/SeanConnery.
101	** The ending has Steve go full [[Film/TheShining Jack Torrance]].
102	* SpoilerCover: One poster shows a human hand in plastic wrapping, spoiling that cannibalism is involved in the plot.
103	* StalkerWithACrush: Despite only pretending to be this, Steve sometimes ends up liking his victims in a romantic way, such as [[spoiler:his wife Ann, Noa herself, and the woman who wrote in the fashion magazine, as well as any who saw that note before Noa.]]
104	* StalkerWithoutACrush: Steve romances women to get them alone in his cabin, always for their meat. It's implied that he stalked them on social media first to find the loneliest ones.
105	* TheStinger: Midway through the end credits we get a shot of five people sitting around a table covered in bleeding meat.
106	* TitleDrop: Steve tells Noa the meat is better fresh.
107	* TokenBlackFriend: Subverted. Noa's ''only'' friend is a Black woman named Mollie.
108	* TrustPassword: Invoked. Mollie gets suspicious someone else is texting her on Noa's phone when her message of "Love you" gets a heart emoji instead of "love you more". "Love you" "Love you more" is an exchange that was established twice before as a regular back-and-forth between the two women, so the text not following this pattern gets Mollie concerned.
109	* WomanScorned: ImpliedTrope. When she learns [[spoiler:her husband is seeing another woman, Ann becomes insecure, and ultimately tries to kill Noa with her bare hands.]]
110	* WrongGenreSavvy: Unlike Paul, who realizes just in time that he's in a horror movie, Noa firmly believes she's in a romantic comedy and misses or ignores all the red flags until it's too late.

Context Film / Fresh2022