Forbidden Fruits – Movie Review (3/5)

FORBIDDEN FRUITS is a Satirical Horror Comedy described as Mean Girls meets The Craft. This is always a risky move because it isn’t really accurate, but at the same time, it isn’t wrong either. You should love the cast, which will (hopefully) keep you watching. Also, the fact that Diablo Cody is a producer on it. Read our full Forbidden Fruits movie review here!

FORBIDDEN FRUITS is a true genre-hybrid, which is a horror-comedy at heart, but one that is much more satirical than laugh-out-loud funny. With four girls as the main characters, the comparisons to Mean Girls and The Craft seem almost unavoidable, so I can understand why the marketing would lean into this.

As someone who loves both, I was ready for whatever this satirical horror comedy would bring to the table. Fortunately, it starts by bringing a brilliant core cast, so I was intrigued by this alone. And yes, I did enjoy it overall, but genre fans will probably enjoy the end most of all. It gets brutal.

Just to give you an idea of the overall vibe, I should mention that Diablo Cody (Jennifer’s Body) is a producer!

Continue reading our Forbidden Fruits movie review below. Find it on VOD from April 28, 2026.

Fruity Girls in retail

Forbidden Fruits takes place in the clothing store “Free Eden”, where four girls will find themselves bonding over having fruity names. Senior employee Apple (Lili Reinhart) has created a coven, so she secretly runs a witchy femme cult made up of fellow Free Eden employees.

Alongside Apple, we have her fellow fruits Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) and Fig (Alexandra Shipp). What will soon shake up the coven is the new hire, Pumpkin (Lola Tung). She will challenge their very performative sisterhood, while also trying to solve a mystery of her own.

One you won’t know all the details of until it blows up the retail coven.

Everything in Forbidden Fruits is over-the-edge and kitschy, which is clearly on purpose. I would have liked for the darker elements to come to the forefront earlier. At the same time, I also appreciate the character-driven slow-burn approach that keeps you guessing.

That eerie feeling is there from the beginning, so you know it won’t end well.

And it really doesn’t!

Four awesome stars

If you watch more dark genre productions than anything else, then surely one of the characters will be less familiar to you than the other three. Fortunately, she does an excellent job, and as she’s the proverbial “straight man” in the comedy elements, it works perfectly fine if you have no prior knowledge of her work.

Her name is Lola Tung, and most will probably recognize her as the star from The Summer I Turned Pretty. However, it’s worth noting that she has another genre movie coming out in 2026. The next Osgood Perkins (Keeper) movie, The Young People, is expected to have a release date later in 2026.

So, while Lola Tung is moving into these genre productions, we have three other stars already doing well within our dark corner of entertainment.

One of them is a personal favorite of mine: Victoria Pedretti. From The Haunting of Hill House to The Haunting of Bly Manor (where she was the star), on to YOU and, most recently, Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, Victoria Pedretti just always makes everything better!

Rounding out the coven is the leader, played by Lili Reinhart, who was brilliant in American Sweatshop, and the fourth member, played by Alexandra Shipp, who played a title character in Tragedy Girls.

Also in the cast is Gabrielle Union (Breaking In), but you need to stay for the end-credit scene to actually see her. Before this, you only hear her voice.

Watch Forbidden Fruits on Digital

Forbidden Fruits comes from director Meredith Alloway and is produced by Diablo Cody. I’ll be perfectly honest and admit that, as a rule, I will watch anything that Diablo Cody has been involved with. That’s just how it goes when you’ve written stuff like Jennifer’s Body, United States of Tara, and Lisa Frankenstein.

And as much as I liked the vibe and overall story of this 2026 satirical horror comedy genre-mix, I wanted more from it. I can’t put my finger on it except to say that I liked the beginning, loved the ending, but felt somewhat lost around the middle. When I expected the plot to evolve, it was more of a mood than a plot.

The film is an adaptation of playwright Lily Houghton’s stage play “Of the Women Came the Beginning of Sin and Through Her We All Die”. And yes, this is the full title – look out for it on a T-shirt during a pivotal moment in the movie. Director Meredith Alloway and playwright Lily Houghton co-adapted the screenplay.

Forbidden Fruits was released in theaters last month, and the film is now headed to your home via IFC and is coming to Shudder this summer.

Forbidden Fruits is out on VOD on April 28, 2026. It will be on Shudder from June 26, 2026.

Details

Director: Meredith Alloway
Written by: Meredith Alloway, Lily Houghton
Starring: Lili Reinhart, Lola Tung, Victoria Pedretti, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Chamberlain, Gabrielle Union