By Dan Skip Allen

The 2000s is a decade that had a specific look and vibe about it similar to other decades. Each decade has its own style and fashion as well. “Forbidden Fruits” is a film that focuses on these specific elements of this decade. Similarly, like “Mean Girls”. Which even created its own dialogue and verbiage that transcended that decade. This horror comedy is trying to copy that aspect of the era. The problem is that it doesn’t even come close to creating its own voice or persona. It’s just a bad rip off of “Mean Girls” and “The Craft” now  that I think about it, and that is not a good thing. 

Apple (Lili Reinhart, Hal & Harper) is the leader of a group of teenage girls all named after Fruits. Fig (Alexandra Shipp, X-Men Apocalypse), Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) all work at a clothing store in the local mall in Highland Park, Texas, called Free Eden. When a new girl, Pumpkin (Lola Tung), is hired, these other girls, specifically Apple, are threatened by her. Little does Pumpkin know that the other girls are a coven of witches who practice witchcraft in the basement of the mall. They try to do whatever they can to get rid of this young woman, but she’s very popular amongst the group and with the manager of the store. This causes issues with Apple, who hates the new girl.

As teenage girls can be, they are very vindictive towards other girls in their same age bracket. These specific girls being in a coven makes the venom they spew that much more poisonous. They try a curse to help them get rid of their problem, but it ends up backfiring on them, and all of their lives are in danger. Playing with magic as they say is not something you should take lightly. As a cat named Shirley Temple clearly finds out. This leads to problems within the group as they start turning on each other. That’s where things get a lot crazier in this horror-comedy. It doesn’t mean the film gets any better, though, because it doesn’t.

Lili Reinhart had me excited when I saw her in Hall & Harper, the Mubi sensation that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival last year. She was amazing opposite Cooper Raiff. That excitement was instantly lost when I saw her with her red wig in this movie. She’s channeling Regina George (Rachel McAdams) from “Mean Girls,” and she’s not even close to what McAdams was doing in that role. She’s not nasty enough, mean enough, or vindictive enough. She’s trying to be all of these things but fails. She just doesn’t have the right stuff for this kind of role. As soon as she came on screen the first time, I knew what she was doing, and it wasn’t to my liking.

There are a few things that this movie wants viewers to know. First, Diablo Cody is a producer on it. She tends to write or be involved with things that focus on a teenage gaze. Second is that this group of girls idolizes Maralyn Monroe. Her whole vibe is what these girls are going for. From the fashion to the hair and makeup she made famous and her glamor. Working at a boutique clothing store like the one in the film is the perfect setting for this kind of story. Meredith Alloway, the writer/director, tried to bring this specific aesthetic to the movie, but none of that mattered because her script was bad. I know it was supposed to be funny, but I didn’t laugh once at this movie.

There is one thing that the film uses in a way as a muguffin. A storm rages throughout the film, and it plays a factor in the end of the movie. This was a bit ridiculous.  The storm caused problems that ended up making things worse for the girls in the film. The mall and so forth is a shelter of sorts, but it is more or less a tomb for some people. I’ve seen my share of films that use bad weather as a plot device, but this time, it didn’t work for me. I was just rolling my eyes at some of the things that happened as a result of the weather. It was a bit far-fetched if you will. 

“Forbidden Fruits” tries to infuse elements of very popular movies from the early 2000s, “Mean Girls” and “The Craft” into its story but fails miserably. All of the teenage aspects were done okay but not great. The witchcraft stuff was also fine but not great. Whereas the other two movies did this stuff much better. I’m sure Alloway was inspired by the other two movies, but she didn’t infuse enough of herself into this film instead of other movies. I liked the whole aesthetic of the early 2000s the writer/ director was going for, but it wasn’t enough for me to recommend this horror comedy. Neither horror or comedy was good enough, either. This movie was just a mishmash of a bunch of things that don’t work in this context.

2 stars