Fresh: Movie Review

Cast: Sebastian Stan, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Charlotte Le Bon, Jonica T Gibbs
Director: Mimi Cave

Noa (Normal People's Daisy Edgar-Jones) is tired of dating.

After one too many dud meet-ups, she decides to swear off the apps for a while, frustrated at the attitudes of the men she meets. However, while on a break from the dating scene, but secretly yearning for someone, Noa meets Sebastian Stan's dashing Steve in the supermarket.

One flirtation later over cotton candy grapes, ("I didn't think people met people IRL these days", Noa says) Noa's swapped numbers and rushes headlong into what seems to be a perfect relationship with Steve. But when she heads off on a romantic weekend with Steve despite warnings from her best friend Mollie (Gibbs, one of the film's stellar supports), everything changes as Steve reveals his true nature.

With plenty of close ups of mouths and eating, you can guess what's coming as the film winds its smartly executed premise into something a bit more taut and horrific. 

Cave turns the film into a meal of two halves, with the film's titles not coming until 33 minutes in, a sign that not everything is as it seems.

A second half that references Julia Ducournau's work and elements of Saw turn the initial meet-cute into something more sinister as the pace slows, but the intensity ramps up. In fact, it's the slowing down of the pace that renders it more into a psychological drama of an unsettling nature.

Stan dials up his charisma and underplays his part to queasy effect early on, while Normal People's Edgar-Jones, while channeling elements of Dakota Johnson, more than delivers in her first bigscreen outing.

An ode to the perils of dating, the benefits of having a good friend and the pitfalls of being single, Fresh may have comedic elements early on, but its meshing of those with a more horror-led bent turns into something that, while not entirely palatable at times for some, is unsettlingly gripping throughout.

Fresh is streaming now under Star on Disney+