Sometimes, there are no words:
Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, Mimi Cave’s “Fresh” is a movie about cannibalism. Yes, cannibalism, the eating of people. Yes, Disney. It’s not a parody or a satire like “Get Out.” It’s a straight up horror film about a charming doctor, played by Sebastian Stan, who seduces women, kidnaps them, and carves out pieces of them for sale to high paying customers. Eventually, they’re all carved up and dead.
Written by Lauryn Kahn, I guess “Fresh” is supposed to be hip. It’s way too hip for me, that’s for sure. (Hip may be on Dr. Steve’s menu.) Disney will release it not on DisneyPlus but on Hulu, and try and distance their brand name. But it’s Disney, folks, nonetheless.
Plodding along the lines of “Get Out” and “Parasite,” “Fresh” may considered hip because a woman wrote it and another one directed it. But women can make the same mistakes as men. Just because you’ve got a good cinematographer and production designer doesn’t mean you’ve got a good movie.
Don’t read the whole thing too soon after eating.
Has this Lauryn Kahn person lost her mind? Did this Mimi Cave person think it clever to make a movie in which a Hannibal Lecter figure preys upon young women as an allegory about misogyny? Could it be a brief for vegetarianism? Have the executives at Disney who greenlighted this atrocity gone over to the dark side? Or are they just out to see if they can make money by shocking Disney’s traditional audience?
Walt Disney must be spinning in his grave fast enough to power all of California by now.
When you sever the TV service and concentrate on entertainment from more reliable sources, you tend to miss developments such as this one. I’m not sure that’s a good thing, even if learning of this obscenity will cost me even more sleep. I await the reaction from American moviegoers generally. I pray their horror resembles mine – not the ghoulish sort of horror the movie’s makers probably hope to elicit, but at them, and at Disney.
3 comments
“Allegory for misogyny” is my guess. If they’d wanted to make a cannibalism movie which was more horrific because it hued closer to the real world, they’d have showcased women who ate their own children. You can dig into this worldwide phenomenon, though it will take digging because it’s not much discussed, whether because it’s truly horrifying or because it doesn’t fit the narrative. (Or, you know, don’t dig into it on account of it’s horrific.)
I don’t remember which Simpsons episode it was, but it was based in the future (right about now). In it, Marge made a comment that everything changed so slowly, and when was it that Fox News went XXX?
I can put on my swami turban and predict that in 2028 Disney will be known as the world’s premier horror studio.
“Pop culture is filth.” ~ John Derbyshire.
When trying to honestly relax and take my mind out of this world, I must reach across the ocean. There, I find peace, hope, and love.