‘Fresh’: Levels to It, You and I Know
Simple, nasty horror movies are never simple, though they can certainly be nasty.
Horror movies, especially the sort of mid- or low-budget stuff that just sort of appears on your streaming services without warning, are often the most satisfying stories you’ll find1. In part this is because they trade on visceral, everyday experiences that most of us can relate to. In part this is because terror and fear always feels personal—you can’t help but imagine it’s your hand being cut off by the creepy psycho, or that you’re being chased through a maze of twisty little passages, all alike, by a faceless slime monster2.
But another reason horror has always been—and remains—one of the most consistently interesting genres (especially on screens) is the layering opportunity it provides. Horror movies are never about what they’re about. They’re about the murderous slime monster, yes, but also about the pandemic, or the commodification of the female form, or capitalism. The joy of a great horror film is sometimes picking those different layers apart and realizing you’ve been getting two or three stories for the price of one.
Which brings us to Fresh, a simple, nasty horror movie that arrived on Hulu in early 2022. It’s a fun little horror movie, but its modest budget and mid-range cast shouldn’t deceive you: It’s got at least three layers to it. NOTE: spoilers be comin’ people.
Layer One: Cannibal Psychos from L.A.
On the surface level, Fresh works well as a fairly straightforward horror story—and a pretty old-fashioned one, at that. Daisy Edger-Jones plays Noa, a young woman seeking love in the modern way by using a dating app. She’s losing faith in her quest for love because the guys she dates are consistently weird and hostile3. She’s drowning in dick pics and rude assholes. Then she meets Steve (Sebastian Stan), who is a cute doctor. Steve seems very cool, and Daisy is powerfully attracted to him—so much so that she jumps his bones on their first date, much to Noa’s best friend Mollie’s concern.
Then Steve whisks Noa away for a weekend getaway, stops at his remote house for the night, and drugs her4. Noa wakes up chained up in a fairly plush cell, and Steve informs her that not only is he a cannibal who enjoys eating human flesh (but only women, because they “taste better”), he’s also a broker-cum-butcher who sells human meat worldwide for vast sums of money5.
This is old-fashioned because it enforces the classic, all-time rule of horror stories: Fuck and die. Noa’s supposed to be a good girl, and horror always implies that virginal good girls are protected right up until they admit they’re horny and bang someone. Then they’re fair game. If only Noa had resisted her demon urges6! The story also follows, to a point, the old-school and-then-there-were-none approach, as Noa discovers she’s not the only girl chained up in Steve’s house, implying there will be a Final Girl approach to the storytelling. This ultimately gets subverted, but the structure is there.
Layer Two: The Meat Market
Of course, everyone who watches the film picks up on the next layer down in the story: Modern dating and the risks involved. Noa, who is kind and thoughtful and funny, faces a withering assault of shitty men. She goes on a date with a guy who steals her leftovers and berates her when she dodges his tone-deaf kiss and tries to tell him gently that she doesn’t see a future for them. She gets hooked by one guy’s cute dog photo on a Tinder-like app and starts a chat—only to get a demand for nudes within seconds, followed by an aggressive dick pic almost immediately after7.
No wonder Daisy Edger-Jones plays Noa in these early scenes with the weary air of a war veteran. And when Steve arrives on the scene, he’s just a more sophisticated version of these other shitty men. He charms her, he works to appear nice and safe, but is soon revealed to be a violent, nasty asshole who literally values Noa only for her body and the sensual pleasures it can offer him.
Horror always twists common experiences into nightmares; it’s the idea that anything in your life can become a terrifying ordeal that hooks us8. On that level, Fresh works well. This isn’t a story about a psycho cannibal! It’s really a story about the perils of modern-day dating in a world where every interaction is commodified and gamified, where our humanity is reduced to photos of our genitals and angry, irritated meet-ups that simmer with unspoken rage because one of the people involved doesn’t want to fuck the other.
Layer Three: What are Words For
But there’s actually something else going on in Fresh. The surface horror is grisly and well-done, the obvious dating aspects add some nice tension and depth to the story—but the final layer is the real payoff.
Fresh actually loses interest in the “dating is hell” angle once Steve has kidnapped Daisy. Steve is a psychopathic monster, and Daisy is his prisoner—the dating angle kind of fades away. What Fresh is really interested in is communication—specifically, how our ability to communicate is weaponized against us, and how we can turn those tables.
We live in a moment in history where communication with other people all over the world is incredibly easy. But that communication is often turned against us9. Through the dating app, Noa is bombarded with horrifying messages, and while on physical dates she has to listen to all manner of shittiness and politely pretend she gets it. When the terrible, no-good date she’s on at the beginning of the movie lectures her on how she’d be pretty if she dressed in a more feminine manner, you can see how terribly tired Noa is of dealing with this shit. Instead of telling him to go fuck himself, she squints and nods, trying to find a way that the entire conversation isn’t horrifying. Because she knows that if she communicates her own anger and disdain, it’s nothing but angry diatribes and stalking in her future10. Her voice has been taking from her.
Later, when Steve has bamboozled her and chained her up, this happens literally. Her phone has no service, and Steve takes it from her. She has no choice but to listen to Steve’s bullshit and pretend he’s not an insane asshole. Unlike her earlier date, she can’t suffer through an awkward good night and go home11.
Even more interestingly, communication then comes along to save Noa. She can’t make contact with anyone outside of Steve’s hellishly modern house, but she makes contact with another girl being held there and slowly carved into choice cuts, Penny. Penny and Noa form a sanity-saving bond that sustains them, and Noa discovers a note left by a long-gone former resident, communicating a key piece of info and a solid suggestion for how to survive.
Meanwhile, a lack of communication from Noa makes Mollie suspicious, and Steve’s clumsy attempts to respond in Noa’s voice fail because he really doesn’t know her. Mollie immediately susses out that the vacation photo “Noa” sent is a stock image from the Internet, and she weaponizes her own communication to launch an investigation. She hits up an old boyfriend and leverage that connection to get some key information, and drops a pin for him later so someone, at least, will know if she suddenly goes missing12.
And Noa turns the tables on Steve by weaponizing communication against him. She crafts a plan to seduce Steve so he’ll let his guard down, noting that he’s taken an interest and a liking to her13. She asks questions to get background. She feigns interest in cannibalism14 and expresses a desire to try some human meat. She uses Steve’s own words as a model to craft her performance, mirroring back to him his own initial reactions when he first ate a fellow homo sapiens in order to forge a connection. She uses the skills she’d honed on the dating field to bamboozle Steve, being the embodiment of Taylor Swift’s lyric “Find out what you want / Be that girl for a month.” She gaslights Steve the way men have gaslighted her—by pretending to find him fascinating and interesting when all she wants is a physical interaction. The twist is that instead of sex, Noa wants to murder Steve with her bare hands.
It’s all a lot of gory fun. The film does a great job of convincing you that Steve is a charmer, and there’s some terrific tension as the story plays out. But what really makes the film tick are all those layers.
I’m the same, really. On the surface, I’m a rumpled middle-aged disaster of a man. Peel back the surface, though, and you realize there are depths to my rumpledness you couldn’t imagine.
Next week: The very uncanny valley of “The French Dispatch”
My weakness for mediocre horror films is well-known. I’ll watch anything if it’s 3AM and there’s blood in it.
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In other words, they are: Guys.
That this scenario would be just as horrifying if Steve’s intentions were more rapey than hungry is a testament to the innate power of horror stories.
With this and Squid Game, I adore the trend of imagining that the billionaires of the world are all hideous, ugly weirdos. Because we’re all pretty sure the billionaires of the world are hideous, ugly weirdos, right?
Why aren’t more horror movies made out of the consequences of giving into the other demon urges: The desire to acquire more cats than is healthy. Cat Horror is an undiscovered country.
No one will ever be able to make me understand sending a photo of your dong to someone as a courting ritual. No one will ever convince me that this isn’t the move of a sociopath.
Even socks? Yes, even your socks can be terrifying. For example, imagine you sit down on your bed tonight and try to remove your socks and experience terrible pain and are unable to do so. And then you realize your legs are slightly shorter than they were yesterday. Because your socks are eating you. You’re welcome.
I haven’t owned a car since 2015, yet I am constantly assured that I can extend its warranty. And so many Russian ladies want to get to know me I think it might be time to learn the language. Don’t tell me my texts and emails haven’t been weaponized against me.
And dick pics. It’s dick pics all the way down.
Of course, the horrifying subtext here is that most probably most of the guys Noa has been on awful dates with would be Steve if they could.
Is it hilarious that ex-boyfriend later almost arrives to save the day before suddenly noping out and driving away? It is. Also: Accurate.
Putting a thick line under the film’s other universal theme: Men may be monsters, but we are also incredibly stupid.
I mean, who hasn’t feigned interest in cannibalism to get through a bad date?