Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!
Because I feel like I am always catching up on movies, there are always movies that “everyone” watches, especially on streaming services, that I don’t see for a few years. Such is the case with the Hulu movie Fresh, which released about three years ago. This is a movie pushing a half million reviews on Letterboxd, but I’m just getting to it now.
I’m honestly surprised that this movie exists as a movie on Hulu and not a dedicated horror platform like Shudder. Fresh is a deeply upsetting movie for a lot of reasons. With a few minor changes, this is straight out of the French Extremity movement. All that’s lacking here is a lot of gore, and Fresh makes up for that in a number of other ways. So, while we’re not specifically going to see the sort of things you might in Martyrs or L’Interieur, there’s still plenty of stomach churning joy to come. It’s worth noting that it’s impossible to talk about this movie without spoiling it, so consider everything after this point to be under a spoiler tag.
One of the more effective elements of Fresh is that it pulls a strong head fake on the audience, much like Audition. This starts out as a romantic comedy as we watch Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) try to find love on a dating app. Things seem to be going her way when she meets Steve (Sebastian Stan) at a grocery store. The two hit it off and begin dating. Eventually, the relationship gets to a point where Steve asks Noa to spend a weekend away with him. She agrees, tells her friend Mollie (Jojo T. Gibbs), and off the go. It all seems fine until we discover that he has drugged her drink.
Fresh lulls us into a sense of security, and we as the audience don’t realize that we haven’t even seen credits until this point—they show up literally 35 minutes into the film. And this is where the film takes a sharp left turn into extremely upsetting territory. What we find out is that Steve (who is actually named Brendan) captures women, not to sexually abuse them, but to slowly dismember them and sell their body parts as meat to the wealthy who are looking for a more disturbing thrill. It’s such a horrifying moment when he reveals his plan to her, telling her that he’ll keep her alive and healthy for as long as he can—she sells for more if she’s kept fresh (hence the title).
This is really the last 90 minutes of the movie. Noa tries to keep herself alive in anyway that she can while Mollie starts to look for her missing friend, realizing that if she goes to the police, they’ll probably tell her that her friend isn’t actually missing—she’s just with a date on an extended vacation. Mollie’s sleuthing eventually leads her to an upscale house where she meets Ann (Charlotte Le Bon), who turns out to be Steve/Brendan’s wife, and also turns out to be a part of the entire business model of capturing women and selling them off as food.
Fresh is deeply disturbing on so many levels, and that’s exactly what makes it work. The most upsetting part of the film isn’t the conversations about what’s being packaged up and sent to Steve/Brendan’s customers. No, it’s the nearly pornographic shots of the food being prepared. Steaks being lovingly butchered, meat being slowly passed through a grinder, and more. It’s the kind of thing that will very much put you off red meat for a couple of days (not a problem for me—I haven’t eaten red meat in about a decade).
It's equally disturbing for just how casual our bad guy is about what he’s doing. He can’t really seem to understand why anyone who he’s captured is upset about what he’s doing. After all, he’s going to take care of Noa while he slowly amputates body parts off of her, even going the creepy trope route of asking her to smile for him.
Finally, the lengths that Noa goes to in order to survive is also horrifying. Her attempt to get her captor to trust her involves demanding that he cook for her, expressing curiosity about what his product tastes like—this is much of the source for the pseudo food porn shots.
There are, of course, plenty of movies that are going to feel like they are connected to Fresh. Raw from 2016 and Bones and All, also from 2022, are going to be top of the list. Barbarian (2022 again—a big year for cannibalism and confinement) has some real similarities as well, but the movie that I am most reminded of is The Collector from the 1960s. If you know exactly how much I like that movie, you know that that is high praise, indeed.
Why to watch Fresh: It’s far more upsetting than you expect it to be.
Why not to watch: You’ll give up meat for a week or more.
I also have this in my watchlist. I also had this in my private Letterboxd horror list of films I was hoping to watch. I don't know if I can make things up for next year.
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