ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Forbidden Fruits director Meredith Alloway about her feature debut. Alloway discussed her style, the film’s gore and sexuality, plus the sequel tease at the end. Starring Lili Reinhart, Lola Tung, Victoria Pedretti, and Alexandra Shipp, it is now playing in theaters.
“Free Eden employee Apple secretly runs a witchy femme cult in the basement of the mall store after hours – with fellow fruits Cherry and Fig. But when new hire Pumpkin challenges their performative sisterhood, the women are forced to face their own poisons or succumb to a bloody fate,” says the synopsis.
Tyler Treese: Meredith, congrats on Forbidden Fruits. I had such a fun time watching this. You open the film very boldly. There’s a guy masturbating in a parking lot. A few minutes later a guy says, “I want them to spit in my mouth.” There’s a very sexually-charged energy to this opening. Did you wanna let people to know what they were in for with this wild ride, or why was the opening that?
Meredith Alloway: So the opening is sort of an iteration of the play written by Lily Houghton, Of the Woman Came the Beginning of Sin and Through Her We All Die. If I’m remembering it correctly, ’cause it’s gone through so many iterations, this happens to someone on a subway, you know? Then, when we moved the play, we sort of set it in Dallas. I was like, “Well, what’s the Dallas version of this?” It’s like people in their cars.
It’s hilarious to me that it would be like a dad in a polo shirt and khakis, just like everything about the movie. We were always like, “Follow the giggle, follow the satire of it all.” But I do think it gives people permission to go, “This movie’s gonna be chaotic. This movie’s not gonna take itself too seriously.” So I’m glad that you were getting those vibes because that’s what we were going for.
I love that this took place in a mall because people don’t know this now, but malls really were their own ecosystems, and it’s sad to see them die out over time. Can you discuss the importance of setting this in a mall and why that was key to the story? Because I thought it was really fun to have one location, but for it to be so varied.
Yeah, I mean, again: paying homage to the play, which is sort of one setting in the store. I was like, “Let’s move it to a mall.” The play was set in New York. I was like, “Lily, how do you feel about moving it to Dallas?”
I’m from Dallas, and the mall is based on a mall that will not be named, which is still cool and it’s beautiful. It was built in the sixties. It has natural light has everything from like Neiman Marcus to H&M, and you go at Christmas and there’s still cars lined up trying to get parking spots. To me, there is an ecosystem, and I think that this movie is very much about power dynamics and also women trying to build a garden in a literal capitalist structure.
Not to be like overtly political about it, but to be like honest about how these girls working at a store where they are all trying to make money informs their relationship. It also gives us a chance to, I love that you noticed the line, “I want her to spit my mouth.” We did that in ADR, and I believe that that is my manager and a producer on the movie, Trent Hubbard. I was like, “We need more chattering about them,” so he’s gonna be happy that you noticed that.
I was really impressed that this was your feature-length debut because the film has such a defined style to it. Can you speak to finding that confidence to really just have a style down for your debut?
Meredith Alloway: I think I surrounded myself with people that had done this before and people that were very inspiring to me because I’ve made a bunch of shorts. But a feature is a different ballgame, as you’ve said. Our DP [Karim Hussain] is spectacular. I was a huge fan of his, his films that he shot for Brandon Cronenberg, Possessor and Infinity Pool, and he goes for it. He is fearless and he can really help me hone in on the style he own.
He also owns like 5,000 Blu-rays. He’s such a cinephile. So I could be like, “We can’t split a whole body, can we split a head?” And he’d be like, “Oh, let’s watch this movie from the seventies, Shogun Assassin.” Then that, I was like, “Oh my God.” He’s an encyclopedia.
Our costume designer, Sarah Millman, and our production designer, Ciara Vernon, had done this before, had their own vision, and so I just was sort of shepherding it. Also, the cast, these ladies are experienced in what they do, and they really elevated and helped me do my job.
This movie has a really fun ending and a mid-credit scene that is a tease for a possible continuation. Do you actually have an idea for a sequel, or is it just a fun way to bring the story full circle?
A little bit of both. I tend to love, particularly in a genre film, like I think Sinners does it so well. Huge, huge, huge, huge fan of Ryan Coogler. But I think it’s so fun to have a genre film do that. I also have some ideas for the next movie. Lily and I have tinkered about. And I do think it would be fun to follow Sharon and Apple is all I will say.
Not to go into too many spoilers, but there are some deaths later on in this movie that are just balls-to-the-wall disgusting. You really went for it there. How was it making that decision that if people were gonna die, we’re going all out and gonna go crazy with it?
I mean, we gotta keep body horror alive. I watched Coppola’s Bram Stroker’s Dracula when I was five. The Lost Boys is my Bible. I think that they do like gore and body horror in such a fun way that we can still laugh at it. It’s almost like the more you push it, the funnier it is. You know, like when we did a test screening, we did the… oh, I don’t wanna give it away. Oh, I almost gave it away. Let me just say some of the kills, people were laughing, and I was like, “Okay, I think that it’s working.” You know? So I really just wanted people to have a good time with them.
Thanks to Meredith Alloway for taking the time to talk about Forbidden Fruits.
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