Fresh Review

Fresh was previously reviewed at Sundance 2022.

PLOT: A young woman (Daisy Edgar-Jones) looking for love thinks she’s met the man (Sebastian Stan) of her dreams. He’s a wealthy, charming plastic surgeon, but – it turns out he has some unusual appetites. Literally. 

REVIEW: Fresh is without question the first breakout hit of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Produced by Searchlight Studios, the movie is already set for a March 4th debut on Hulu (with an international roll-out on Disney Star to follow). The reaction to the film has been good enough though that you almost wish Disney/Searchlight would bite the bullet and give this a theatrical release as if we’ve seen any genre play well over the pandemic, it’s been horror. Fresh is, for lack of a better word, a fresh entry to the genre and a strong debut for director Mimi Cave, who adopts a seriocomic vibe that’s pleasing. That said, if you’re like me and particularly sensitive/disgusted by the notion of chunks being cut off and consumed, you might reach for the vomit bag once or twice. 

Two top-shelf leads anchor the film. Daisy Edgar-Jones is up and coming following her breakout role on BBC’s Normal People, and she’s a likeable lead. A love-lorn lady trying to negotiate the humiliations of online dating, she’s easy prey for Sebastian Stan’s crazy charismatic doc. Effortlessly picking her up in a supermarket, Stan’s never been better. Despite everything – namely that he’s a cannibal who sells the meat of the young women he imprisons, something is charming about him, even at his worst. I don’t want to say he’s likable, but he’s plutonium level charismatic, making even Christian Bale’s Patrick Bateman look like a square. Of course, you don’t want him to get away with anything…but… 

It’s a pretty daring movie in some ways, and Cave’s direction makes this one of the strongest horror debuts in some time. Waiting a full thirty minutes to run the opening credits, and using a kickass soundtrack of eighties bangers, with Stan carving up patients while belting out Peter Cetera’s “Restless Heart” and more, the energy in this flick is off the charts. It has a nice look, too, courtesy of Pawel Pogorzelski, which, again, makes me wish this was going out theatrically, but I digress. While mainly a two-hander, Jonica T. Gibbs is appealing as the best friend who knows if something is too good to be true, it most definitely is, while Charlotte LeBon has a nice part as a woman with a unique connection to Stan’s character. 

Through it all, though, it’s Edgar-Jones and Stan who own the screen. Edgar-Jones plays it pretty low-key, allowing Stan to chew the scenery, and this dynamic works well, especially as the character tries to ingratiate herself to him as the movie goes on. Of course, being that she’s the heroine, you hope she’ll survive more or less intact, but it’s established early on that pretty much anything goes here. 

In terms of gore, Fresh isn’t wall-to-wall blood and guts, but it’s a quality, not quantity kind of thing here. There are lots of loose limbs being chewed on, and enough human culinary delights that I had a pretty queasy feeling through, although I’ll admit cannibalism has always been the one few things in horror that’s horrified me. So Fresh kept me on the edge of my seat with the vomit bag handy (I didn’t blow chunks, but I came close). I had a blast with it, and people will probably love it when it hits Hulu later this winter. It’s a sleeper I didn’t see coming and an iconic new role for Sebastian Stan. 

Sundance 2022

AMAZING

9