The horrors of modern dating seen through one young woman’s defiant battle to survive her new boyfriend’s unusual appetites.
When reviewing a fairly creepy outing like “Fresh,” it’s hard to know how much is too much to tell without spoiling some of the fun. That is, if by fun you mean spending time with Hannibal Lecter on an evening out.
Soon after the opening credits roll, we meet a comely Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones), enduring an online date where a seemingly nice guy named Chad (Brett Dier) turns out to be a self-absorbed jerk. Upon receiving their entrees at a Chinese restaurant, Chad steers the dinner conversation straight into the details of his acid reflux condition – albeit self-induced. He regales his captive audience of one about his love for hot sauce that he can’t help but apply to his food at any opportunity. After a brief pause, he switches gears and notes how he thinks that women of his parents’ generation dressed nicer than their contemporary counterparts, obliviously dissing Noa. Adding insult to injury, he blithely expects Noa to pay for her own meal and then collects her leftovers for his brother back at home. Nice.
In an attempt to navigate such choppy waters, Noa and her best friend Mollie (Jojo T. Gibbs) trade notes about the good guys and bad guys – mostly bad – in terms of their romantic potential. If the two women seek a “Fresh” take on finding Mr. Right, rest assured they are sorely disappointed. The implication of the film title instead moves the narrative in another direction altogether.
Enter Sebastian Stan as Steve, who assumes a darker but quite different turn from Bucky Barnes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Upon a chance encounter with Noa in a grocery aisle, the initially self-effacing and charming Steve soon enough reveals his nefarious intentions.
Despite Steve’s ostensible charm, Mollie harbors a suspicious nature borne of long experience in the dating world. After a bit of internet searching, she learns that Steve is married to a beautiful blonde named Ann (Charlotte Le Bon). This after Noa has agreed on a weekend trip with Steve and then goes missing for over a week. When Mollie investigates further by going to Steve and Ann’s house, things go awry quickly from there.
In due course, Noa, Mollie, and a girl named Penny (Andrea Bang) all end up in Steve’s house of horrors in some isolated rural locale. Meanwhile, one of Mollie’s guy friends named Paul (Dayo Okenyi) gets curious when she goes missing also. Using his smartphone, Paul amasses enough clues to save the day, yet humorously misses his chance to be a hero because he correctly surmises that he could also just turn out to be the next victim of Steve and Ann.
At various parts throughout the film, the story begins to feel like a vast metaphor of modern life, catering to pockets of rich men in seclusion scattered across the globe – hinting as it does about the commoditization of people, where everything and everyone has a price. “Fresh” might even be regarded as a precursor to the full and final chapter of capitalism before the structure more or less collapses into sheer depravity and decadence. Or maybe the movie is simply a cautionary tale about eating animals. Either way, it certainly has the one percent of the one percent in its crosshairs. If that’s going too far, the allegories nonetheless contain elements of truth. As Steve supplies his wealthy customers in domestic and faraway lands with goods no one should be able to procure or sell, he operates in the shadows, largely with impunity.
“Fresh” wants to be daring and perhaps even provide a bit of social commentary. And while in a sense it does, still something seems missing. Despite its potential, the denouement mostly falls into the realm of thriller cliché, though happily not without a suitable degree of retribution before it’s over.
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