Forbidden Fruits Review

Review of Forbidden Fruits (2026) by screenqueeen: 👍 4/5

i found this to be an incredibly smart self-aware quasi-horror examination of 'girl movies' designed to appeal to mass cliques from high school to college. instead of the film using its base as a tool to shape societal expectations, it's pretty apparent that Alloway and Houghton show you the handle of the tool and how it's used so you know how it's been wielded in the past.

girls and women will get a lot out of this but even more so will the queer girls and nonbinary creatures in the study of Apple, a character i can only see a lot of writing surrounding in the coming months and years. there's much to be said about closeting and masking here (it's all over the place in bright neon lights) but more so is it about delving into recognizing patterns of control and understanding what creates the need for that control to be exerted.

depending on the way you look at it, it could be due to the above queer issues in a negative context, as it frequently is utilized as a device to fill in for true motives instead of granting a villainous character real depth behind her malicious and harmful actions. but i think it's doing this within the film as well as creating a surrogate audience to drive this anti-queer judgement home, simulating an argument separate from the world of the film yet still set inside of it, between Pumpkin and Pickle. the final act uses the 'evil gay' stereotype to its advantages and gives us that blood and gore we crave so much but by packaging it with the 'evil gay' perpetrating it, both the violent payoff and the reasonings behind them come at you at the same time in a way that uses both the stereotypes as a satirical device taken seriously by the villain filtered through the surrogate audience, critical of its usage because it is sourced and grounded by a felt queerness in its dna. through this there is a duality, presented as embracing the practice of superficiality yet drives a knowledgeable critique of it through a biting facetiousness as a facade used as camouflage.

honestly i found this equally brilliant and surprising, a perfect antithesis to crap like THE CRAFT that uses feminism as a prop-up and abandons those principles when conflicts resolve. i want to see so many essays about this film. i had no idea until the credits that Diablo Cody was involved in this but as soon as i saw her name i shouted "i knew it!!!" because there was no way this was getting made and she wouldn't be a part of it.