A shopping mall, and one trendy clothing retail store in particular, becomes center stage for a power feud among sisters in pitch-black horror comedy Forbidden Fruits. The Diablo Cody-produced cult film-in-the-making bears the familiar killer instincts, quick wit, and pop culture satire that made Heathers such a perennial favorite, but for a new generation. While it reserves its most prominent horror elements for its splashy finale, Lili Reinhart‘s femme fatale casts a beguiling spell.
It’s an introduction to Reinhart’s commanding Apple, who seduces a leering dad into a compromising position before inflicting humiliation from the parking lot before the start of her shift, that begins director Meredith Alloway‘s feature debut. It’s the type of control and confidence that instantly marks her as queen bee of her clique, before we meet Fig (Alexandra Shipp) and Cherry (Victoria Pedretti), the two other current members of the Forbidden Fruits, the sisterhood formed from the employees of the shop Free Eden.
The threesome is in search of a fourth member to round out their coven after tragedy befell their last sister when newcomer Pumpkin (Lola Tung) arrives. Instead of witchy harmony, though, Pumpkin disrupts the ranks and forces the Fruits to confront their poisonous ways.
Alloway, who adapts the stageplay Of the Women Came the Beginning of Sin, and Through Her We All Die with its playwright, Lily Houghton, maintains razor sharp focus on its central foursome comprised of Gen Z’s favorite It Girls. While fashion trends come and go, archetypes never really go out of style and just about all are represented within the deceptively insidious Fruits. If we’re drawing Mean Girls comparisons, which the social hierarchy here is apt to do, Pedretti’s loveable ditz Cherry channels the daft perkiness of Karen Smith while Shipp’s stylish but people-pleasing Fig matches Gretchen Wieners.
Ultimately, though, Forbidden Fruits builds to a savage faceoff between Apple and Pumpkin, two darker, more cunning visions of Regina George and Kady, respectively. Unlike Mean Girls, it takes a much murkier approach to the motives and morals of its two opposing ladies.
It’s the battle of wits and the Gen Z vision of shopping mall witchcraft that engages most in this single-location horror-comedy. Alloway’s feature debut never leaves the mall, but production designer Ciara Vernon keeps it visually interesting with an enchanting vision of Free Eden and flourishes of teen girl whimsy scattered across the shopping center, including an inspired use of surveillance tech by way of Barbie.
Cinematographer Karim Hussain (Infinity Pool, Gen V) captures the witchy social destruction with a dreamlike quality, isolating the frenemies in a bubble of heightened reality removed from the rest of the mall’s employees and regulars that include Free Eden’s boss (Gabrielle Union) or forbidden love interests like Fries Boy (Zack Thompson). Or even traumatized former coven member Pickles (Emma Chamberlain).
Forbidden Fruits wears its cinematic influences on its sleeves as friendships curdle and contempt breeds violence, but unlike Mean Girls or Heathers, Alloway and Houghton afford their primary antagonist more depth and a vulnerable backstory. Reinhart latches onto Apple’s internal complexities and coaxes them to the forefront, earning surprising allegiance in the process even when Apple is at her most vicious. And boy does she get ruthless come the film’s gory climax.
As delightful and winsome as this cast can be, it’s Reinhart who runs away with the film and leaves you rooting for Apple to dig her witchy claws into a new friend or foe. Forbidden Fruits may not necessarily forge new terrain in the teen satire space, but Alloway brings so much style and energy to her well-cast single-location stageplay adaptation for the Gen Z crowd.
Forbidden Fruits made its premiere at SXSW and releases in theaters on March 27, 2026.