Fresh (2022)★★★★★

Ok, this is a movie I actually appreciate MORE the second time around, even knowing all the reveals. It’s so entertaining and there are a ton of little details I may not have picked up on when I watched it the first time, and I loved it this time.

(There may be some spoilers, but I’ll try to keep them to a minimum)

For example, Noa and Mollie’s relationship is set up really well without too much awkward exposition. It makes things clear why Mollie noticed immediately that something was off in the text messages, and I loved the image search scene.

The cinematography is impeccable. The odd angles, switching from close-ups to skewed perspectives, focusing on what people are eating, it’s so good. The music (both the score AND the soundtrack) is so fitting.

For a movie almost two hours long, the pacing worked really well. You get a lot of character development up front, and a lot of tension built up through the middle, and a truly excellent payoff at the end.

I wasn’t sure how I would feel about the Sebastian Stan and Daisy Edgar-Jones pairing given the 16-year age gap (it does make Noa’s decision-making a bit more questionable in the movie, which is par for the horror-movie course, but the age gap itself is also kind of par for the Hollywood course so whatever), but they worked so well together.

I think a LOT of it has to do with how well Sebastian Stan plays Steve. Just the right blend of creepy and charming, especially to Noa’s frustration and exhaustion in the general dating pool. But don’t take that as my discounting Daisy Edgar-Jones at all. She was fantastic throughout each step of Noa’s journey.

There are a lot of movies about the horrors of being a woman and the horrors of dating, but, pun wholly intended, I felt this was a fresh take on the theme that really worked. I feel like this movie requires a lot of content warnings: violence towards women, close-ups of meat and people eating, and so on…but if you’ve got a strong stomach for this kind of thing (har har har), I’d recommend it.