Spoiler Warning: FreshWhile the year is still young, Hulu's newest body horror, Fresh, is an early contender for the year's best horror film. The film centers around Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a young woman navigating through the perils of online dating. After a bad date, she meets an eccentric man named Steve (Sebastian Stan) in a local grocery store. After the two bond over a bag of cotton candy-flavored grapes, Steve gets Noa's number. After only knowing Steve for a short period of time, Noa decides to go on a vacation with him, but after stopping at Steve's home, she finds that's not what he has in store. Over thirty-three minutes in, the film turns to the second act when Steve spikes Noa's drink, and she passes out. At this point, the credits begin to roll, and the genre shifts from a romantic comedy to a horror film.
Noa finds herself a prisoner of Steve, as he tells her that he'll keep her alive as he slowly cuts parts from her to sell to his wealthy clients. In a way, this is a commentary on dating culture, as not all bad dates are just bad dates. Some dates go on longer before one leaves, to find that pieces of them are gone when they're out of the relationship, staying with the person who took them. The world of Fresh surrounds a group of wealthy elites whose greatest pleasure comes in the fact they get to keep those pieces. Stan's Steve might just be the surgeon, but he's no different, as his whole existence is based on the pleasure he reeks from taking these pieces.
While cannibals may not be lurking around every corner, what makes Fresh so horrifying is that many people hold the same desire as Steve — taking from people what makes them whole and moving on to the next, in a cycle that is never-ending and never fulfilling, whether it be in dating, politics, or business.
Sebastian Stan's Chilling Performance
Sebastian Stan has gone from a Marvel heartthrob to one of the best actors working today across genres. Stan plays Steve, a plastic surgeon with a unique talent for butchering human meat. What makes Steve so horrifying is that he's so full of life and energy. He dances as he butchers his meat and doesn't see the negative side to his victims being trapped, waiting to die. To Steve, his victims have the pleasure of being in his company. Upon locking Noa away, Steve tells her that her treatment will be good as long as she doesn't act out, but at the same time, he tells her he'll hack pieces off her until there's nothing left. Even before leaving Noa alone, Steve tells her he isn't that bad of a cook. Steve thinks he's doing his victims a favor but is torturing them by keeping them alive as long as possible to harvest them. Steve plays mind games with his victims and to those he takes a liking to, they have a chance to escape as long as they submit and humor his "tastes."
Noa discovers that if she gives Steve the proper attention and aspires to be his girlfriend, she may find a way out as she gains his trust. Noa wouldn't be the first through, as Steve's current wife, Ann (Charlotte Le Bon), was a former victim who seemingly charmed her way out, albeit not without losing a leg first. While Noa is playing a game to escape, Ann seems to have genuinely lost herself in Steve, as in the end, she attempts to kill Noa despite Steve being dead already. Ann had given her entire self to Steve, so when he died, there was nothing left.
Steve, just like his clients, gets off on keeping pieces of his victims, keeping their personal objects behind a painting, and pieces of them for his personal use in his fridge. He doesn't see the consequences of his actions. Steve simply sees what he does as just another job and the pain he causes as justified because it fulfills him. It is the thought of his victims becoming one with him that truly sustains him, rather than the meat itself. Steve takes souls more so than lives. In his last moments, Steve looks at Noah and smiles as she pulls the trigger. While Noa killed him, Steve died happy knowing he'll always be a part of her.
The Terrifying Body Horror
The most terrifying part of Steve's intentions is that he makes the butchering process so brutally slow, taking body parts based on the victim's attitude. At one point, Noa tries to escape but is stopped. As punishment for Noa's escape, Steve decides to take her buttocks, but not only does he take it, he makes sure she's awake to tell her what he's doing as he does it. Later on, when Noa is dining with Steve, she asks him if they're eating her. While they are not eating her, Steve's menu is a source of humor for him, as they dine on someone named Hope, with Steve joking that the name is ironic for her. As Noa takes each bite of Steve's food, the source of the meat is always a chilling question. Late in the film, the two dine on breast meat. Steve states the taste of the breast meat might even be familiar. It's never revealed why it's familiar, but it was likely Noa's friend, Mollie (Jonica T. Gibbs), who went searching for Noa and was eventually captured by Steve. When Noa and Mollie escape in the end, the placement of Mollie's incision seems to coincide with the final course. In all the scenes where Noa dines with Steve to gain his trust, there's always the fear that Noa is eating someone she knows or eating herself. While this is a source of terror for the viewer, it could also be a commentary on how one devours themselves in a relationship and brings the people trying to help down with them, thereby devouring a part of them.
There isn't a ton of carnage until the end of Fresh. However, it feels throughout the film that the audience is witnessing a bloodbath. Director Mimi Cave leaves a lot of the body horror to the imagination. Apart from Noa having her buttocks removed, none of the surgeries are shown, but the aftermath of them are. The audience sees Mollie limping off with an incision under her arm, while Penny (Andrea Bang) is missing a leg. Melissa, although never shown, is heard offscreen, seemingly surrendering to her death as the likelihood is Steve has carved her up. There was no need to show these injuries happen, as the most horrifying part is thinking about all the ways they could have.
A Satisfying Climax
The climax of Fresh comes when Steve takes Noa back to his room to be intimate with her. She's completely gained his trust. Noa decides to use the bathroom prior and steals a tube of toothpaste. She manages to castrate Steve while spraying the toothpaste into his face. Noa goes on to free Penny and Mollie, and the trio overpower Steve and escape, with the final result being Noa taking Steve's gun and shooting him. While Steve did succeed in taking a piece of each of them both literally and metaphorically, it's a triumphant ending and bloody finale deserving of any classic horror film, where the female leads slay their assailants and, most importantly, all of them survive.
While the trio survived, the struggle persists, with the elite diners likely to find another Steve to replace him. Cave's message could be thought of as dating being a source of cannibalism for the self with no solution in sight. One desires love and relationships the same way they do food, and there's a risk each time of a Steve being encountered. They might not literally try to devour a person, but instead retain a part of them by using them as objects for their own selfish desires and pleasure.
In the film's closing credits, the wealthy elite that Steve has been serving, continue to feast together. In a broader sense, one that producer Adam McKay does often cater to, this closing image relays the idea that the feast never stops. Seeing Steve as representing a politician, he may be out, but the wealthy will simply find someone else to take his place and continue the cycle of harvesting the masses for their own gain/pleasure. Fresh is one of the year's most horrifying films, as the audience grimaces during Noa and Steve's human-based dinners, and the thought of what Steve has done to the others is left to the vast imagination of the mind. Fresh is about all of humanity and the feast that, by nature, they're subjected to be a part of.