Forbidden Fruits (2026) Movie Review: Is It Woke? | VirtueVigil

There's a store at the Highland Place mall called Free Eden. It sells cupcake-scented candles, charm bracelets, and the kind of overpriced cotton sundress that costs more than your rent. The employees are gorgeous. They have their own slang. They only text boys using emojis. And at some point after closing time, they gather in a candlelit upper room called Paradise and perform rituals in service of what may or may not be actual witchcraft.

Welcome to Forbidden Fruits, the debut feature from writer-director Meredith Alloway, produced by Diablo Cody and adapted from Lily Houghton's Off-Broadway play. It premiered at SXSW in March 2026, opened to a respectable 76% on Rotten Tomatoes, earned R-rated content warnings for violence, gore, nudity, and sexual content, and landed in 1,500 theaters for a modest $1.2 million run. Critics compared it to Mean Girls crossed with The Craft, which is accurate in the same way that describing a Rottweiler as dog-like is accurate. The breed details matter.

The film centers on Apple (Lili Reinhart), the self-appointed queen of the Free Eden coven. She has long red hair, stiletto heels, and a philosophy she calls the Shine Theory. It states that all women have an inner glow and must surround themselves with other women so they can all shine brighter together. She also requires her sisters to banish vindicars -- her word for anyone who does not enthusiastically support the coven's collective self-image. Rule three is the emoji rule. Apple runs her sisterhood with iron precision dressed up in glitter.

New to the mall is Pumpkin (Lola Tung), a pretzel-shop employee from Sister Salt's. She wants in. She wants Apple. She gets both, and that is where the trouble starts.

The hook of Forbidden Fruits is genuinely clever. Variety's Owen Gleiberman put it plainly: the film perceives that for these girls, progressive anger is now inseparable from fashion. Apple doesn't just lead a cult. She has constructed a feminist ideology as cult infrastructure. The Shine Theory, the banishing of vindicars, the confession rituals before the spirit of Marilyn Monroe as the ultimate femme martyr -- it's all academic feminist righteousness repackaged as consumer aesthetics. Buy in or get out. Literally.

This is the film's most interesting idea. Alloway and Houghton are smart enough to see the target. Whether they're willing to really hit it is another question.

Here's the problem. The film's satire aims at performative feminism and hits it squarely. Apple is exposed as a manipulator who weaponizes sisterhood doctrine to control, isolate, and ultimately destroy the people around her. The film is genuinely funny about the way progressive-coded language becomes a tool of domination in the wrong hands. That's a valid and perceptive observation. But the script's resolution doesn't discredit the ideology -- it discredits Apple's execution of it. The idea is still presented as beautiful. The vessel was just broken.

Pumpkin's challenge to Apple is not ideological -- it's personal. She wants genuine connection, not a curated doctrine. That's a relatable motive and Lola Tung plays it with warmth. But the film never arrives at a moment where someone looks at the Shine Theory itself and says: this is wrong, not just misapplied. That distinction matters.

Victoria Pedretti as Cherry is a standout in a different way. She's been described by some critics as the film's sapphic beating heart, a woman who embodies sensual freedom without irony or shame. Pedretti brings real charisma to the role, which makes the character's trajectory genuinely affecting. Whether you read her arc as tragedy or triumph depends entirely on your priors.

Alexandra Shipp as Fig is the resident skeptic, the one who questions Apple earliest and pays a price for it. Her scenes with Tung have a low-key chemistry that the film doesn't quite know what to do with. Emma Chamberlain appears in a supporting role that confirms she can act with her face. Gabrielle Union is underutilized but delivers presence in limited screen time.

The horror elements are genuinely effective. Alloway has an eye for contrast -- the film's brutal violence lands harder because it erupts from a setting of aggressive pinkness and consumer warmth. The mall aesthetics are not just set dressing; they're the point. Beauty culture and occult violence sharing the same visual vocabulary is the film's sharpest argument.

What separates this film from pure agitprop is its refusal to make any of its women purely good. Everyone has darkness. Everyone has selfish motives. Apple's crimes are real and the film punishes her. In that sense, there is a traditional moral architecture underneath the neon -- bad behavior leads to violent ends, manipulation destroys relationships, and outsiders with clear eyes see truths that insiders cannot. Pumpkin survives because she never fully drinks the Kool-Aid, or in this case, the boot.

But the ideological scaffolding never fully collapses. Forbidden Fruits ends up somewhere between satire and celebration. It critiques the cult of performative feminism and simultaneously glamorizes it. Apple is the villain. Apple is also the film's most seductive presence. That tension may be intentional. It may also be a failure of nerve.

Formula: Weighted Score = Severity × Authenticity Multiplier × Centrality Multiplier

🔴 Woke Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Feminist Ideology as Cult Doctrine	5	Moderate	High	9
Sapphic/LGBTQ+ Content as Primary Narrative Thread	3	Moderate	High	5.4
Anti-Male Worldview as Coven Doctrine	3	Low	Moderate	4.2
Witchcraft as Female Empowerment	3	High	High	3.78
Biblical Sin Narrative Reframed as Female Reclamation	2	Moderate	Moderate	2
Progressive Anger as Fashion/Identity	2	High	Moderate	1.4
Praying to Marilyn Monroe as Femme Martyr	2	Moderate	Moderate	2
TOTAL WOKE				27.8

🟢 Traditional Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Cult Leader Exposed and Punished	5	High	High	6.3
Consequences for Self-Destructive Behavior	4	High	High	5.04
Authentic Connection vs. Performative Solidarity	3	High	High	3.78
Ideology as Instrument of Oppression	4	Moderate	Moderate	4
The Skeptical Outsider as Moral Clarity	3	High	Moderate	2.1
TOTAL TRADITIONAL				21.2

Score Margin: -6.6 WOKE