Fresh review – very millennial horror-comedy has more bark than bite

“I’m really fucking hungry,” says Noa, a twentysomething woman lost in the hinterland of boredom and bad dating. She bares her teeth in the rearview mirror, checking for scraps of food, anticipating a date with a man she met on an app. It's an encounter that will end with him criticising her lack of “femininity” and dealing with her rejection of him using that age-old tactic: he didn’t fancy her anyway, stuck-up bitch.

Fresh, starring Normal People’s Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan, is all about the horror of modern dating – an unending parade of disappointment, anonymous flesh and unsatiated appetites. For the most part, it takes you by surprise with its witty observations and staggering reveal. At the same time, it falls prey to shallow tropes of flimsy feminism and rote plotting. While patchy, it still serves as an intriguing platform for debut director Mimi Cave.

With its modish neologisms (“dickmatized,” etc.) and social media-heavy script, Fresh is keen to let you know that it is Very Millennial and aware of the fatigue so many people have with online dating. So when, after a string of awful dates, Noa meets a man in real life – in a supermarket, no less – she’s immediately taken with his refreshingly offline charm. The man is Steve (Sebastian Stan), whose dorky jokes and sweet charisma instantly sets him apart from the incel-adjacent pontificators Noa has been recently subjected to.

Though we don’t know their characters’ ages, the 16-year age gap between the actors, as well as Steve’s financial wealth, contribute to the implicit power imbalance between the pair. Noa seems to make the unspoken decision to roll with it, agreeing to a weekend away with him on just date three – a reckless, out-of-character decision that will change the course of the rest of the film.

Revealing any more would be a monster spoiler. But with the poster’s severed hand, the trailer’s blood-red rendering and tagline “it’s not for everyone,” the eventual veer into horror is somewhat expected – though despite heavy foreshadowing, little can prepare you for the end destination. Once we’re past the thirty minute mark (which is when the credits eventually drop – always deeply satisfying when this is delayed, for some reason), Cave finally lays her cards on the table.

Here, she deals in themes we’ve seen before in recent horror efforts, but establishes a distinct visual style laced with welcome, sordid humour. Both cognisant of the dangers inherent in making yourself vulnerable to men and a darkly comic look at the way women eat each other up à la The Neon Demon, the film is at its best when it has you at your most uncomfortable, unsure whether to laugh or shudder at what’s playing out on screen.

The film is self-aware of several horror tropes, including those concerning Black characters, so it’s a shame when it soon bows to other clichés. The ending, in particular, feels too neat when viewed alongside the gut-wrenching and arguably more realistic endings of recent films like Promising Young Woman. What’s more, characterisation is sorely lacking: Steve becomes a metaphor for man and Noa a metaphor for woman, neither with any distinguishable traits that provide an interesting backstory or reason to root for them.

Perhaps Fresh would have benefitted from leaning further into gore to truly chill us to the bone. Still, the audience in my screening were whooping and cheering in delight during the climax, and so it’s a real shame that the film is going straight to streaming; the atmosphere, as is often the case with horror films, was electric when viewed with a crowd. A wild enough ride to forgive some flaws, with an excellent soundtrack to boot, Fresh succeeds by the skin of its teeth.

Fresh is available to stream on Disney+ from 18 March.