A glossy, queer-coded mall-set horror-comedy with strong camp energy, sharp visual appeal, and a very specific Gen-Z femme-satire vibe. It sounds more memorable for mood, performances, and social dynamics than for airtight plotting, so it’s best approached as a style-forward cult item rather than a fully satisfying… Read more
19% ★☆☆☆☆ (134,244)
Forbidden Fruits
Where to watch: Philo
Movie · Horror · Comedy · R
2026 · 1h 43m · ★ 19% (134K)
The coven just clocked in.
Director: Meredith Alloway
Starring: Lili Reinhart, Lola Tung, Victoria Pedretti
Overview
Free Eden employee Apple secretly runs a witchy femme cult in the basement of the mall store after hours - with fellow fruits Cherry and Fig. But when new hire Pumpkin challenges their performative sisterhood, the women are forced to face their own poisons or succumb to a bloody fate.
Lili Reinhart, Lola Tung, Victoria Pedretti, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Chamberlain, Gabrielle Union, Hailey Summer, Jordan Duarte, David Pinard, R Austin Ball, Charlie Larsen, Siddharth Sharma, Jeff Sinasac, Kwaku Adu-Poku, Devery Jacobs, Zack Thompson, Jacqueline Byers, Harrison Byers, Caroline Vartanian, Aidan Almanza
Where to watch
Philo, AMC+, Shudder, Sundance Now
Curator Review
Verdict
A glossy, queer-coded mall-set horror-comedy with strong camp energy, sharp visual appeal, and a very specific Gen-Z femme-satire vibe. It sounds more memorable for mood, performances, and social dynamics than for airtight plotting, so it’s best approached as a style-forward cult item rather than a fully satisfying genre machine.
Best for
fans of witchy teen and young-adult horror-comedy
viewers who like camp, queer subtext, and femme-group dynamics
people drawn to mall nostalgia and liminal Americana
audiences who enjoy messy, performative friendship drama with blood
Skip if
you want tight horror logic or serious scares
you dislike ironic, meme-adjacent humor
you prefer straightforward supernatural stories over satire
you are turned off by heightened teen melodrama
Overview
Forbidden Fruits plays like a neon-lit after-hours spell cast in the food court: part witchy sisterhood fantasy, part workplace satire, part blood-slick breakup with performative girlhood. The premise is instantly legible and the mall setting gives it a pleasingly artificial, nostalgic glow, the kind of environment where every friendship feels both curated and doomed.
Worth noting
The film’s appeal seems to live in its tone: campy, flirtatious, and self-aware without fully tipping into parody. The popular reaction suggests it lands hardest as a vibe piece, with performances and image-making doing a lot of the heavy lifting. That can be a strength if you’re here for aesthetic pleasure and social venom, but it may leave viewers wanting more narrative bite.
Bottom line
What makes it interesting is the way it uses sisterhood as both costume and curse. The “witchy femme cult” setup promises a fun collision of empowerment and rot, and the new hire disrupting the group gives the story a clean pressure point. If you like your horror with glitter, irony, and a little emotional poison, this is worth a look.
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