Noa is a pretty, inconspicuous, respectable girl, one who can go unnoticed at a superficial glance (excellent choice of Daisy Edgar Jones, protagonist of the Normal People series). She has no relatives, only a dear friend, Molly, a Jiminy Cricket figure. One day Noa, tired of too many unsuccessful appointments combined on some app, while she is shopping in a supermarket she is approached by a real man, timidly, sympathetically (I thought it was no longer used, she will tell her friend).
He, Steven (Sebastian Stan), is very nice physically, he is a decent one too, witty the right, with the right ways of doing things, a surgeon who doesn’t pull it off, with a nice house. Noa lets herself go (fuck it, she thinks, in spite of all the beating she’s always done) and she starts a very pleasant relationship with him.
What’s wrong with Steven, he’s going to be married, for good! Obviously the viewer, even if he hadn’t watched the trailer that spoils a lot, already anticipates disturbing developments, if slightly sadistic, or fears them, if apprehensive. And there will be developments quickly, but they will be far worse than expected. Because Steven is someone who has an infrequent peculiarity and is also a shrewd businessman. With his beautiful house, with his beautiful face. If you have teenage daughters or grandchildren in your family, it might be tempting to show them the film, but it would be pure nastiness, you risk that they won’t leave the house anymore.
Because Fresh is a truly successful horror story, which makes you uncomfortable, which disturbs and involves, even if in the end it lacks a frequent flaw in films of this genre. But if everyone did the right thing at the right time, some films would end after half an hour. And in fact it is a venial defect, compared to the whole central part, very tense, which in part recalls an ancient film of 1965, The collector, with Terence Stamp and Samantha Eggar (but only in part, due to the general situation).
Do not pay attention to those who seek too many hidden allusions to the body of women and its commodification, which are not thought about while one is witnessing the escalation of horror with real discomfort. Nor do you compare it to other products of the so-called Torture Porn, because here everything is suggested and off-screen and no smoky socio-political theories are camped out to justify it all (think of Martyrs). Directs Mimi Cave, at her debut and we will keep an eye on her, but the merit of the film’s success lies equally in the script by Lauryn Kahn, which too many reviews spoil, unfortunately.
After the vision, however, we wondered about the reasons for our discomfort, why this story, a slight variant of others already seen, has particularly taken us. Because this is what the most successful products of the horror genre do, they make us uncomfortable, disturb, evoke ancestral fears. Without bothering us for those who are frightened by killer insects, or birds or sharks, without considering the normal serial killers and their atrocities, on which fortunes have been made in Hollywood, or great classics like Poe or Lovecraft (the supernatural always pulls), there are some arguments that are more agitated, something more subtle that touches more personal chords, perhaps. And each will have his favorite titles.
It could be the great classic The Silence of the Lambs, with Hannibal Lecter suggesting he is having a friend for dinner. Or the imitation of him who forces the victims to sprinkle themselves with moisturizer, so that they can better skin them to make a dress. And the family of Don’t open that door and of the many clone films of the genre, is more horrifying because its members are cannibals or just because they are horrid and disgusting beings, now the slightest trace of humanity has been lost (we also think of films like A quiet Scary Weekend, Last House on the Left or Wolf Creek)?
But whoever has children in the family will be equally horrified at the many films and TV series in which innocent little children vanished in the blink of an eye, only to be found torn apart shortly afterwards or searched in vain for years by heartbroken parents. And we are also horrified at the physical and psychological abuse inflicted on the “house slaves” in the splendid series The Handmaid’s Tale. These are movies or series that are best not to watch before bed, because they could make you feel agitated, increasing your adrenaline rate.
So, returning to Fresh, a film that deserved a big screen release, we would like to recommend it. It’s nothing so new in the genre scene, it’s just a well thought out, well crafted and well acted variation, albeit at times with a very dark humor of its own. Yet it works, because its protagonist does what he has to do better than others. It is a bit like saying that even the concentration camps were nothing original, that there are so many in every war. Sure, but how the Germans had organized them …
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