A stranger called Steve (Sebastian Stan) makes a charmingly awkward impression in the fresh veg aisle, as Noa (Normal People’s Daisy Edgar-Jones) consoles herself with some grocery shopping, after yet another disastrous date. This guy seems different from the usual round of Chads on Tinder, with their gross etiquette and fuming entitlement. Even if he is a mysterious plastic surgeon with a suspicious lack of social-media presence, Noa decides to put aside her cynicism with the whole process and give him a try.
The first half-hour of Fresh is wrong-footingly sweet, boy-meets-girl territory, with a sharp lurch in tone a-coming: as a kicker, it saves the opening titles for the very moment when things get weird. This coincides with Noa being back at Steve’s house, an architecturally lavish woodland pad in the middle of nowhere, while realising she has no phone signal; her best friend Millie (Jojo T Gibbs, terrific) told her to be more careful. Steve, who has just drugged her, is far from your average predatory kidnapper, and has designs on her body she wouldn’t have guessed in her worst nightmares.
This warped horror-thriller, which just opened Sundance’s Midnight line-up, is an attention-grabbing debut at the very least from Mimi Cave, best-known for her music videos. To detail the traumas awaiting Noa, which dozens of women have already suffered at Steve’s scalpel-wielding hands, would be spoiling not only the film’s icky surprises, but potentially your breakfast. Vegetarians are bound to find it quite revolting, and the film stands a chance of converting quite a few viewers in that direction.
As a commentary on how women get fed through the meat-grinder process of modern dating and come out with hideous tales to tell, it’s bracing stuff, if hardly on Planet Subtle. The black-comic tone picks up in many ways where Promising Young Woman left off, but this lays on a baroque buffet that fans of the TV series Hannibal will equally lap up.
As often in that show, we’re seated at dinner while the antagonists get each other’s measure: Noa, chained to her chair for these high-end repasts, has a survival strategy she’s beginning to figure out.
