"Fresh" (2022) : A wonderfully upsetting portrayal of just how wrong modern dating can go

Fresh (2022) is a horror film with comedic elements, available on Hulu. I implore you to watch the film before reading any more. Be warned, it is not for the faint-hearted. Seriously.

A well-made horror film

Ingredients:

Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones, Normal People)

Steve (Sebastian Stan, Bucky from the Marvel movies)

Mollie (Jonica T. Gibbs, Twenties)

The horrors of modern dating come to life in the worst ways imaginable

Steps:

Step 1. Be Noa, a nice but lonely girl struggling with dating via dating apps

Step 2. Meet a nice handsome guy randomly in a supermarket

Step 3. Get to know the guy

Step 4. He takes you to his house

Step 5. He gives you a drink

Step 6. What happens next is not what you'd expect, it's much much worse

For the first 20 to 30 minutes of Fresh, the film presents itself as a romantic drama centered around Noa and Steve's relationship. I was interested to see where it would go next, but thought it would be somewhat predictable. To say that my jaw dropped after those first 30 minutes were over would be an understatement. It was anything but predictable after that, switching gears to become a very visceral horror film. To say anything more would spoil the film, in the same way that Marion's shower scene changed the entire genre of Psycho from a crime thriller to a horror film, and anything after that was totally unexpected.

Noa is played with an awkward charm and steely determination by Edgar-Jones, while Steve seems like a nice guy only to turn into something akin to Joe Goldberg from You, just even more deranged, with both sides of the character played very believably by Stan. The film is pure white-knuckled terror and unsettling moments after the initial half-hour, with the back-and-forth between the two leads being very natural despite the increasingly horrific circumstances. There are also loving close-ups of food, so what's not to like? 

The final 10 minutes is actually a little drawn-out and anti-climactic, but it still works as the culmination of everything in the film up to that point, and everything leading up to that has been so well done that it didn't bother me too much.

I really recommend this one if you aren't too squeamish.

Score: 9/10