By John Serba

Forbidden Fruits (now streaming on VOD platforms like Amazon Prime Video) is absolutely loaded with promise: An amusing premise involving a witch coven operating within a mall clothing store. Kitschy-campy horror-comedy vibes. A new voice in first-time feature director Meredith Alloway, who adapts Lily Houghton’s impressively titled stage play Of the woman became the beginning of sin, and through her we all die. And a high-potential cast of young stars-in-the-making, including Lili Reinhart, Lola Tung, Victoria Pedretti and Alexandra Shipp. The question we may end up struggling with is whether the final product lives up to all that potential.

FORBIDDEN FRUITS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: The opening song, “Scantily Clad” by Haute and Freddy, perfectly encapsulates the tone of Forbidden Fruits, with its ’80s-Madonna synth beat bopping beneath a bold, empowered neo-femme lyric: It’s telling us that this movie is throwback pastiche accessorized with modern sensibilities. The setting is a dinosaur of a Dallas shopping mall, the type that seems all but dead in 2026 – all the easier for a coven of mean-girl witches to operate out of the breakroom of a clothing store without drawing too much attention, I guess. In the parking lot, we meet Apple (Reinhart) as she encourages an ogling lout to fondle his manhood in her presence so she can send him to the hospital with third-degree coffee burns on his junk. An audacious opening scene, for sure, but one that lacks the snap and timing it needs to draw a big laugh, emblematic of the picture as a whole.

Anyway. Apple is the alpha saleswoman at Free Eden, a chain boutique chock-full of drastic-cut halter tops and spangly miniskirts. Her left hand is Fig (Shipp), a smart and friendly sort, and her other left hand – remember, there is no right hand, only left-hand paths in occultish circles – is Cherry (Pedretti), a dingbat. You’ll note they’re all named after fruits, and they wear matching bracelets with charms representing each member of the clique. One day, the girl wearing frump-o khaki shorts handing out free-sample pretzel nugs in the food court shows interest in whatever the hell these women are doing, and those women are enamored to learn that this pretzel chick is named Pumpkin (Tung, The Summer I Turned Pretty), which, like a tomato, is technically a fruit but often characterized as a vegetable. All Pumpkin knows about being a witch involves “broomsticks, spells and Nicole Kidman,” but she’s quickly indoctrinated in an induction ceremony where she confesses her sins to the ghost of Marilyn Monroe – “even the President couldn’t tell her what to do” – and swears to follow the rules of the coven, one of which is to “only text boys using emojis,” part of a loose doctrine in which they always defend each other as women, and never trust men.

And so Pumpkin becomes One Of Them, quickly proving she’s not just a salesgirl but a saleswoman. Frankly, Apple should know better. A real witch knows that witches historically function within the rule of three. The dynamic is all wrong. And there are chinks in the chain here – Pumpkin learns that Cherry secretly shtoinks male mall employees under the guise of going to therapy, and Fig secretly wants to settle down with a nice guy named Norman (Siddharth Sharma) and “build an Ikea couch” with him. Ugh! How un-witchy! At this point, should we be sussing out an ulterior motive from someone, likely Pumpkin, since she’s the new member? Probably. Meanwhile, a former Free Eden employee named Pickle (Emma Chamberlain) turns up in a state of mental distress, prompting Apple to lead the coven in casting hexes and whatnot. The sisterhood seems to be coming apart at the seams. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Forbidden Fruits is an underwhelming blend of Heathers, The Craft and the afore-referenced Practical Magic, with a similar misfiring tone to Lisa Frankenstein and leaving us wishing it took more chances like The Ugly Stepsister. 

Performance Worth Watching: Playing to supporting-character type – the bimbo and the smart one, respectively – Pedretti and Shipp fish around for some depth and shade to their characters, and find a little bit here and there in their nonverbals and the tone of their line-readings. Give Pedretti the honors here though, for making us laugh more than any of her castmates.

Sex And Skin: Man butt, lady boobs, a sex scene that’s more comedic than graphic.

Our Take: Diablo Cody’s name turns up in the producer credits – honest to blog! – so Forbidden Fruits aims for that noble-wiseass feminist vibe. But the film isn’t likely to reap the critical reclamation that Jennifer’s Body enjoyed, or the (not quite deserved) backlash Juno eventually endured. No, Fruits is ambitious but unfocused, a collection of ideas that never really come into focus. It’s a hashtag-girlboss satire, it’s an assertion of feminism, it lampoons horror films, it flirts with kitsch and pastiche and gore – and it’s ultimately less than the sum of its parts.

Alloway’s comedic instincts are on point: Her screenplay is tapped into the cliches of neo-feminism, it’s rife with snarky and referential dialogue, the symbolism of ripe fruit has potential for potency and her influences are smart (keep an ear on Anna Drubich’s score for subtle nods toward an all-timer of a witch-coven film, Dario Argento’s Suspiria). But it’s the execution that underwhelms. Visually, it’s drab and undynamic. The overall tone is shaky, the comic timing is off. Dramatically, the story struggles to build and sustain momentum. And character motives never crystallize into anything memorable. When you’re 30 minutes into the film and wondering what it’s doing and where it’s going, the spell it’s trying to cast is klaatu barada necktieing itself into inefficacy.

There’s plenty to like here, including the central performances, throwaway jokes (the mall restaurant is named Yeast Garden, the name of Fig’s love interest is Norman, one letter away from outright betrayal of Wiccan sensibilities) and a doozy of a gag involving impractical footwear, an even-more-impractical manicure and an escalator. You can sense it brandishing its claws, but its swipes at vacuous mall culture (especially in 2026) and conformist groupthink sisterhood miss the mark more often than not. Frustratingly, we can see Forbidden Fruits eyeing its targets, but unable to hit them.

Our Call: These Forbidden Fruits just aren’t juicy enough. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.