Main cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones (Noa), Sebastian Stan (Steve), Jonica T Gibbs (Mollie), Charlotte Le Bon (Ann), Dayo Okeniyi (Paul), Andrea Bang (Penny), and Brett Dier (Chad)
Director: Mimi Cave
After dating a series of bores and jackasses that she came across on her dating app, Noa doesn’t expect to bump into a great guy at her neighborhood supermarket. He’s a plastic surgeon, charming, looks like Sebastian Stan, has a big house and lots of money… after a whirlwind romance, he asks her to come away with him to his country bungalow, and of course she says yes. That’s where and when he drugs her and she wakes up chained to one corner of a room, in his basement dungeon. Oops.
It turns out that Steve isn’t just a hot guy. He’s a cannibal. He has a lucrative side business too, carving out bits and pieces of his female victims for personal consumption as well for shipment to his exclusive clientele of fellow cannibals. His supply of fresh meat comes with extras: a photo of the woman from whom the meat came from, and pieces of her undergarments. To maintain the freshness of his meat, he will only carve away bits and pieces from his prisoners only when necessary.
As he tells Noa, though, this doesn’t mean they still can’t be friends while she’s alive!
Despite the premise, don’t expect too many gory scenes in Fresh, as this movie wants to be more of a thriller than a horror flick. It has vegan-approved propaganda scenes of ghastly close-ups of mouths devouring meat now and then, but the bulk of this movie is an excuse for Sebastian Stan to play the affable psychopath.
Yes, yes, Steve won’t be so hot and sexy if he didn’t look like Sebastian Stan, and people are shallow to overlook a multitude of scenes in hot people… and this is fiction. Anyone that rails about how unfair it is that hot people get all the love should remember that Twitter and TikTok is that way, and this is a place for people to wallow in the beauty of Mr Stan as he prances around to music from the 1980s while chopping up some poor woman’s dismembered arm and what not. Much of this movie is so much fun to watch because the sicko is so hot and charming.
Of course, we can’t be too obviously shallow these days without adding a dash of girl power to balance things up, so this one is also about Steve’s victims eventually getting the upper hand and turning the tables, along with some knives and a shovel and more, on him. The female characters headlining this movie have one-note details passed off as personalities: Noa wants a man because she’s lonely, Mollie is the token bisexual or lesbian black best friend (two ticks on the list in one go, people), and Penny is the other girl that happens to be a prisoner in the room next to Noa’s. Because this movie is also meant to be a dark comedy, the black best friend is also predictably the source of sassy one-liners, even in scenes where such one-liners will ruin any emotional impact of that particular scene.
Fresh isn’t even close to becoming a groundbreaking or innovative film, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, hinging on how well the audience is willing to play along with Mr Stan’s darkly tongue-in-cheek portrayal of a hot and charming psychopath. Those that do may have no issues with losing a pound of flesh to him, while others may find this one an okay watch but tad disappointing in how low key it is when it comes to the gore and scares.
Anyway, for me, well, Steve can take a bite out of me anytime, provided I can repay the favor. What can I say? Sebastian Stan always looks good enough to eat.
