Hannibal Lecter and Joe Goldberg are two of my favourite characters. And when both of them to life came together as Steve Kemp in Mimi Cave directed movie Fresh, I had my calendar marked for the release date.
Cannibalism is the ideal base of any horror movie for any horror movie. A crime that heinous can be the most triggering content, even for thriller and horror fans, but also the most tricky to work with. Not enough can leave you unsaturated and too much can make the whole sequence too tacky for cinema.
I was really exhilarated by the trailer of Sebastian Stan and Daisy Edgar Jones starter Fresh (2022), however, as a film student, amateur film critic and writer, this film was only half satisfying.
Trigger warning: Cannibalism, murder, black marketing, kidnapping, stalking, manipulation, violent images.
Also, Spoilers.
Plot
Noa, a young woman yearning for one true love is left disappointed after a string of unsuccessful, ride, and disappointing dates when she meets Steve Kamp. A charming gentleman at a grocery store, they exchange numbers and after a couple of dates invites Noa for a surprise vacation.
Half suspicious yet charmed by Steve's kindness, Noa agrees to go. The young woman soon discovers herself trapped in Steve's dark secret.
Steve uses her and the many other girls like her, as sources for the fresh meat, for a community of rich individuals with a taste of young women, in a literal sense.
Using the best of her charisma, Noa now has to lure Steve into believing her fascination with his interests to make the perfect escape.
All the mistakes...
The plot was inviting, terrifying, intriguing and complex but a few key points and mistakes from the writing department made this movie a little disappointing for me.
Daisy Edgar Jones was tremendous as character Noa until she encountered our antihero, Steve. Apart from the mistake, that we never get to know much about Noa or her life, it seems she was rational and practical until Steve came into her life
Noah blindly trusts the man she met only a handful of times, ignored all the red flags and went straight to an unknown location without doing a background check. This seemed like a willful attempt to push the plot forward at the Stake of the character.
Secondly, the writing felt a little incomplete, dialogues like "it's ok, it's going to be ok, it's all going to be ok" and "Are you going to be good?", and "Bad girl" seemed uncharacteristic to me considering Steve is a high functioning medical professional.
Where writing failed, other units of production cover up for it. Mimi Cave generates a tense atmosphere by textbook horror elements like, slowly zooming in to the face of the characters, slightly offscreen placement of objects, the red hues, and the classic choice of the sound score was dead gorgeous and utterly pleasing to the eyes of horror and slasher fans.
It might be a simple pleasure but the final chase was volatile, exciting, gory yet contentful and gratifying.
Final words:
It definitely did incite the reaction that I wanted to experience. I watched the movie for ever-charming Sebastian, and I was 100% satisfied with his creepiness.
But here are my complaints:
I hope there was more personality in all the characters.
A little more work on dialogues
And a little less of ignoring the obvious
Rating: 6.9 /10
PS: If a person says "I don't eat animals" instead of "I am a vegetarian", Run for your life.
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