Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) is a young woman stuck scrolling through online dating apps in hopes of finding a boyfriend.  She meets Steve (Sebastian Stan), a successful plastic surgeon, but when the two take an impromptu vacation together and do not return, her best friend back home, Mollie (Jojo T. Gibbs), begins to worry.  Determined to find her friend, it quickly becomes a rescue mission as she discovers that Steve is a dangerous predator with a unique diet and insatiable hunger. 

Fresh is a new-age erotic thriller directed by Mimi Cave and written by Lauryn Kahn for Searchlight Pictures as a Hulu exclusive that feels like it is heavily inspired by the thrillers of Jordan Peele while never quite tapping into the formula that makes his films work as well as they do.  It operates much in the same vein as Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman (2020), though Fresh goes on to lean more into traditional horror and thriller genre elements instead of highlighting the social commentary as Fennell did, but that is not to say that Fresh does not have something to say about the current culture, either, it is just not as articulate as Peele or Fennell. 

Cave’s film opens with Noa on an absolutely disastrous date with Chad (Brett Dier), a bumbling fool who uses his joking personality to disguise his rude behavior and racism.  With this, the base line for men in Noa’s dating pool has been set and surely, we can only go up from here.  Further, Cave is setting the tone for the rest of the film that will follow which is one that will be full of uncomfortable laughter.  There are clear jokes peppered throughout the script, but that humor is also very pointed towards male behavior in today’s dating scene, and it brings about these important topics by leaning into the absurd, almost satirical, elements of the script. 

After calling it off with Chad, Noa eventually meets Steve at a bar and the two move quickly into a relationship.  Once at his secluded and off-the-grid cabin, things take a darker turn and – about a third of the way through the film – the title appears: Fresh.  Finally, Cave begins firing on all cylinders as she creates a campy yet terrifying escape room for Noa to try and survive.  While the film does take a big jump after the title card, Cave carefully ratchets up the drama after she is done setting the stage for the last two acts of the film so that once Noa gets comfortable having overcome one obstacle, a new one reveals itself that she must now contend.  These baby steps taken in the second act help to ground the craziness of the third act which is an absolute treat to watch, even if it is a little overlong. 

Stan, in the role of antagonist here, seems a little unsure of how to approach the role.  On one hand, he does very well with the scumbag approach, almost too well, because when it comes to light that he truly does like Noa, we never quite buy the relationship.  He does not differentiate much between the act he is putting on and this supposed genuine affection towards our heroine, and while the fault there may lie more on the shoulders of Kahn’s script, Stan struggles to turn Steve into the fully complex and layered villain the story requires him to be.  Where he does excel is in the campy nature of the character.  Cave’s camera often finds Steve in the kitchen preparing meals or packaging up shipments to his elite customers all while dancing to an inspired needle drop – a clear play on the likes of Hannibal Lector, another cannibal with eclectic tastes in art and music. 

Opposing him is Noa and, from afar, Mollie.  The two have their chemistry quickly established and credit is due to both actresses because in their limited shared screen time, they solidify their relationship which will be key element to buying into the latter half of the film.  Gibbs brings great bombastic energy to the film as the best friend, and we often find ourselves in lock step with her as she begins to work through the mystery of Noa’s disappearance.  Edgar-Jones, while she does elicit sympathy from us given her circumstances, has a much more difficult role to fill in the film.  Much like Stan, Edgar-Jones is asked to do a lot in the film, and the script does not always support her the way it needs to for the story beats to land.  We can track the arcs easily enough, but Kahn puts the onus on the audience to use their familiarity with the genre Fresh is operating in to fill in the gaps between the scenes. 

Overall, Fresh is still an engaging thriller and a fun movie that takes some twists and turns before its pulpy finale.  There is a lot of promise in the concept and many of the individual setups, but the film as a whole lacks cohesion.  Another pass through to work on the structure of the entire narrative would have certainly benefitted the two leads immensely in their performances and therefore made for a stronger film.  Even though it throws out its desire to enter into any commentary on the modern dating world after the title card, Fresh is an enjoyable new-age romantic thriller in its own right and does not cheat the audience at any point as it delivers well on its premise.