Fresh

  • Title: Fresh
  • IMDb: link

In this twisted take on modern dating from director Mimi Cave and screenwriter Lauryn Kahn, Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as Noa, a young woman with bad luck in dating (and worse taste in men). After a meet-cute with Steve (Sebastian Stan) in a grocery store, the pair get together uncharacteristically quickly for Noa to the concern of Noa’s bestfriend Mollie (Jojo T. Gibbs).

It turns out there is good reason to worry when Noa turns up drugged and chained to a wall in Steve’s basement. Steve has plans for Noa, or at least parts of her, for his unusual fetish and business he chose not to disclose during the twenty questions they shared over their first few dates getting to know each other. Awakening in captivity, Noa discovers Steve abducts women like her (and the other women chained up in separate rooms) and slowly removes and sells off their meat to his clients.

Blurring the lines between a fucked-up romcom, dark comedy, and thriller, Fresh is unexpected and unusual but certainly not boring. Pawel Pogorzelski‘s cinematography, framing Noa’s reality through a variety of perspectives and angles, mirrors the shifting reality of Noa herself, constantly searching for a steady footing. Through Noa’s captivity, and friends left behind that go looking for her, we learn more about Steve and the bizarre world he’s carved out for himself as Noa attempts to befriend her captor and stay alive long enough to make her escape (or at least convince the cannibal infatuated by her not to knock her off anytime soon).

Watch the trailer