Babe, wake up, there’s a new campy horror comedy. Retail workers-turned-witches bring Forbidden Fruits into the mean-girl clique cinematic universe. This fun flick has its odd moments, but still manages to deliver a story you’ll want to keep biting into. Director Meredith Alloway has gifted us a fabulous force of evil femmes this March, appropriately for Women’s History Month. The film could alternatively be called Heathers Turned Biblical or, in the playwright’s own words, “Mean Girls, but a Slasher.”
Based on a 2019 play by Lily Houghton called “Of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die,” Houghton and Alloway co-wrote the screenplay, and it’s Alloway’s first feature-length film. The scripture references are heavy-handed: Free Eden employees form a secret coven called “Paradise” in the mall, their leader being Apple (Lili Reinhart), with the others donning fruit names too: Cherry (Victoria Pedretti), Fig (Alexandra Shipp), and their newest member and Veronica Sawyer figure: Pumpkin (Lola Tung).
Pumpkin goes from Sister Salt’s pretzel shop rags to Free Eden retail riches, leaving behind her button-up polo to join a glamorous new staff. She investigates their dynamics, befriending each girl and recording what she learns. A shady story about a previous member of their group named Pickle (Emma Chamberlain) and a hex they’d cast that damned her to an unraveling existence raises some red flags for Pumpkin. When a betrayal occurs, the group tries to guess which one of them is the “snake” — another allusion to the Garden of Eden and Judas’ betrayal of Jesus. The mystery unfolds, concluding with a Final Destination-esque third act.
It-girls and acting chops make this film a success. Each actress has somewhat significant prior credits, but uses this film to show off her range. The most impressive sequences are the dressing room “confession” scenes in which they monologue to a mirror, addressing Marilyn Monroe as their saint and requesting her forgiveness for their sins.
Tung notably makes her first foray into the film space this year, starring in Forbidden Fruits and Chasing Summer (2026) within months of each other. She brings with her a loyal audience following the global success of the coming-of-age book adaptation TV series The Summer I Turned Pretty (2022–2025). Reinhart also flexes her performance skills after being known for the acting bootcamp roller coaster of a show that is Riverdale (2017–2023).
Perhaps the most skyrocketing trajectory of them all could be Chamberlain, who got her start making YouTube vlogs and has become a viral red carpet interviewer, coffee brand cultivator, and the only person at my screening to receive cheers and gasps upon her first appearance onscreen.
The casting of five hot topic Hollywood girls feels strategic for Gen Z viewers. There’s a built-in “cool girl” status that aligns with the clique hierarchy of the story’s shopping mall setting. In fact, the film never leaves this liminal, consumeristic space. Every scene takes place in its hallways, storefronts, or parking decks. When Pumpkin arrives on the friend group scene, the girls are ecstatic to have a fall fruit that “completes the retail season.” Their lives are bound to a claustrophobic existence resembling the plight of Severance, with “Paradise” only being the backroom of their workplace.
Every romantic interest is a man who works at a neighboring business. Much like Eve with the apple, the girls are punished for their interest in understanding the outside world. The character Apple is the tree of knowledge, the god-figure, who is confused why her disciples won’t choose her. Her father has forsaken her, leaving her alone to suffer, which she laments in a very Gethsemane way after basically baptizing one of the girls in the mall fountain.
You may recognize the fountain and the mall itself from the story’s inspiring predecessor: it’s the exact same mall from Mean Girls (2004). They even reinstalled the fountain, which had since been removed. In Forbidden Fruits, a brawl scene in the fountain pays homage to the Mean Girls sequence in which Cady (Lindsay Lohan) imagines her peers fighting it out in the water, with the voiceover, “Being at Old Orchard Mall kind of reminded me of being home in Africa, by the watering hole when the animals are in heat.”
In an animalistic, food chain sense, the friend group fragmentation and personal struggles of each woman manifest through graphic, gory results. Each girl has a deep insecurity or desire that makes them white-knuckle the toxic group, losing their grip on reality in the process. After another hex, every snake is punished. Each of the girls is hiding something from Apple, and they all receive cosmic consequences. Body horror is the gnarly red icing on the cake.
The trailer sets the stage by highlighting producer Diablo Cody’s prior work on Jennifer’s Body (2009). Through this lens, it’s easy to imagine Cherry and Apple’s heated argument at the end of the film being directly substituted with Amanda Seyfried’s and Megan Fox’s iconic: “You’re killing people!” “No, I’m killing boys!” Followed by, “I thought you only murdered boys?” “I go both ways.” Fittingly for this analogy, Reinhart is bisexual in real life and has confirmed her queer interpretation of the character Apple.
Only a few elements hold this back from catapulting straight to cult classic status. Despite Reinhart’s bone-chilling monologue that follows, the final reveal feels somewhat anticlimactic. Certain actions fall short in their motivation, the most egregious being Apple kissing Cherry in the middle of their conflict. A sapphic kiss could’ve felt natural (and welcomed by the target audience), but its placement in the story comes across as an awkward afterthought. Even Cherry’s cleaver strike, though successful in shock factor, is a bit of a head-scratcher (no pun intended).
Somehow, the more fantastical deaths later on don’t feel this way because they commit to their absurdity. They convey a two-faced friend group coming undone in fulfillment of the play’s title, which is conveniently written on Apple’s graphic tee she wears during the story’s denouement.
Despite the parts that deserve a bit more backstory or buildup, the film triumphs. The gender setup is a reverse of the mainstream: we follow the story of three-dimensional leading ladies, while flat, bimbo male characters act as playthings for the women to fight about. The film uses satire to comment on “girls supporting girls” culture, with Apple suggesting that anyone who missteps against her or her coven must hate women.
Women showed up for this film, landing it in the top 10 at the box office with a 73% female audience. It’s a story bi women, for women — excuse me, by women, for women. The power of women and queer audiences is being continuously proven in streaming and box office numbers alike: Wicked: For Good scored $147 million in the U.S. during opening weekend with a nearly 70% female audience, comparable to Barbie’s viewership skewing 69% female out of its $162 million opening domestic profit.
Interestingly, though they consider themselves a coven, the witchy magic never becomes supernatural. This is addressed outright when Pumpkin asks whether the group of girls are witches. Apple posits that her coven’s magic is the mundane shit you would get hanged for in Salem. Fig ties it together, saying, “Being a witch is being a sister, and we all need sisterhood to survive.”
On the press tour, Reinhart, Tung, and Shipp explained the appeal of witches by highlighting how women want to manifest, see other women in power, exchange energy, and have autonomy, particularly given the persecution witches historically underwent for being educated. A coven is a source of community — a space to bond and seek vengeance in a world set on female subjugation.
Costume designer Sarah Millman solidifies the popularity and witchiness of the lead characters with fabulous, vibrant ensembles. They’ve got the nails and the Stanley cups of a retail 20-something, but the fashion, hair, and makeup of a CW show vampire.
Poison, knives, and dangerous escalators are the stuff of reality. Mixed with the insecurities of the group, it’s an uncanny concoction. What is more paranormal in its impact? Casting spells or wreaking social havoc? The film suggests the thesis: anyone can be a witch. Witches walk amongst us already. Apple shows us that dumping coffee on a man’s genitals can be its own kind of sorcery.
You can read our discussion with Director Meredith Alloway and the cast at SXSW 2026 here!
Review Courtesy of Risa Bolash
Feature Image Credit to Independent Film Company via Plugged In