Dating in the modern world can be as tough as an overcooked piece of meat. That’s the exact premise of Fresh, Searchlight Pictures’ unconventional romance that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was recently released on Hulu. Written by Lauryn Kahn and directed by Mimi Cave, Fresh follows Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones), a young woman who, despite her best efforts, continues to strike out with finding her soulmate, or any decent guy for that matter. Down on her luck and irked, she heads to the grocery where she meets Steve (Sebastian Stan), a good-looking, slightly dorky man who tries his hand at flirting. A normal, kind, single fellow expressing interest in Noa…could this really be happening? Not to spoil your produce, but things are about to get weird, and, if you suffer from misophonia, this thriller might not be for you.
Grab your napkins and your meat cleaver, it’s time to unpack that tasty finale.
Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Fresh.
After a delightfully awkward back-and-forth about cotton candy flavored grapes, the two exchange phone numbers, and for the first time in a long time, Noa’s love life seems to be looking up. They meet at a bar, which further cements their chemistry, and leads to a night of bonding over having dead parents, maraschino cherries, and sex. Noa keeps her best friend Mollie (Jojo T. Gibbs) up-to-date on her new guy (until she can’t), and Mollie remains skeptical. No social media presence? In this day and age? Something is off about Steve.
As the movie progresses, Mollie’s instincts prove to be correct, and we soon learn that there is, indeed, something very off about Steve. The two lovebirds continue to be very compatible, and, to keep things from going stale in their relationship, Steve invites Noa on a surprise weekend getaway to Cottage Grove. Noa promptly texts Mollie, who fears Noa might be moving too fast, and Noa and Steve proceed to have a lovely evening of cocktails in his cozy vacation home. Things start to get figuratively and literally hazy for Noa, however, when Steve drugs her drink. And here’s where things start to get really dicey.
Noa wakes up on a mattress, understandably disoriented, and is horrified to learn that she is handcuffed to a wall. The once-charming Steve now dons a turtleneck, which automatically makes him super creepy, and is very upfront with his intentions, saying, “I’m gonna tell you, but you’re going to freak out.” Then he spills the beans on what is about to go down: he’s going to sell her meat and her hair to his wealthy, cannibalistic and fetishistic clients, because, as he calmly sums up, “It’s a thing.” So Noa’s going to die, right? Yes, but not anytime soon. He’s slowly going to harvest her meat from different limbs while keeping her alive because, well, that’s how the meat stays fresh.
Throughout the movie, Noa bonds through the wall with Penny, another one of Steve’s victims, who’s lost track of how long she’s been held captive and…slowly eaten. You might be wondering, “Aren’t these victims’ families concerned about them?” Steve’s one step ahead of you, and only recruits women who he deduces don’t have much family. (Remember he and Noa bonded over having dead parents?) Back in the real world, Mollie’s concern for her friend continues to mount. She does some quick internet searches to try and get more information on Steve. Noa told her he was a plastic surgeon and that they were going to Cottage Grove, but beyond that, nothing else was known.
Mollie doesn’t even trust Noa’s texts, because they don’t seem like how Noa normally talks. She was telling Mollie that service wasn’t great and they’d talk later because she needs a “break” from technology. To calm her nerves, Noa sends her a photo of a waterfall that she allegedly took in Cottage Grove. Mollie smartly drags and drops the image in a Google search and discovers the picture is just a stock photo of a waterfall from a website. Then, as the final test, Mollie texts her “love you” to which “Noa” replies with a heart emoji. This is a big deal and in Mollie’s eyes, the last nail in Noa’s coffin. If it was really Noa on the other end of the phone, she would’ve responded with, “love you more,” the cute, distinct way the two have been ending their conversations for the entire film.
Back at the slaughterhouse, Noa tries to escape but is inevitably caught by Steve, who in turn, surgically removes her buttocks. Mollie heads to the bar where Noa and Steve had their first official date, and talks to Paul (Dayo Okeniyi), her ex-flame that happened to also serve Noa on her date. All Mollie wants is Steve’s last name, so she can narrow her search. Paul retrieves Steve’s credit card records from the night, revealing that his full name is really Brendan Steve Kemp. Add that to the pile of lies.
During her deep-dive, Mollie finds a woman named Ann Kemp (Charlotte Le Bon), who has two kids and a husband named Brendan, who is — you guessed it — Steve. During some not-so-quality time with the human harvester, Noa asks him what human meat actually tastes like. Was she genuinely interested, or was she trying to screw with his mind? Either way, he took the bait and told her that if the meat is prepared right, then it’s “f*cking exquisite.”
Mollie shows up at Ann’s home, and tells her that she thinks her husband is having an affair. Ann is eerily chill about this accusation, and dismisses it rather quickly. Then, Brendan shows up, fresh off his meeting with Noa, and Mollie tells Brendan that she knows he goes by Steve, and that she also knows he has Noa in captivity. The happy couple shrug it off, but Mollie wasn’t going to leave without the truth. She calls Noa’s phone, which loudly rings in Steve’s pocket. Ann, in on the entire situation, knocks Mollie unconscious, only to have her wake up in captivity like Noa.
Paul continues to check on Mollie (she shared her location access to him on her phone), but his texts suddenly aren’t being delivered. He can see that she’s en route somewhere remote, which raises some red flags. We also learn that Ann has a prosthetic leg, which means that she’s part of the whole “selling fresh meat” thing. Remembering that Noa was intrigued by cannibalism, Steve prepared a fancy dinner for the two of them of spaghetti and meatballs…human style. She inquires about his relationship with eating humans, and how long he’s been doing it, and he details how it started out as a reluctant endeavor but became his lifestyle and business. Plus, he cheekily adds, “I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth.”
It’s tricky to decipher whether Noa was feigning interest, or if she was genuinely curious about the taste of human flesh. Maybe a blend of the two? Either way, she digs into the human meatball and is somewhat speechless. “It’s not what I expected. It’s um…it’s indescribable.” Noa takes on a more subservient persona from this moment on, and Steve says he knew she was special because she’s “f*cked up, too.” As soon as he leaves, Noa throws up.
Paul can no longer track Mollie on his phone, and decides to take matters into his own hands. Last he saw, she was in the same sketchy place as Noa.
Steve gives Noa a pink dress, and says he’s hoping she can wear it on their next dinner date (which she does). The two dress up like it’s their anniversary, and Steve dismisses a text from Ann asking when he’ll be home. The two eat someone's liver, and Steve shows Noa where he keeps items from the victims to include in packages to his clients, so they can feel “closer” to them. Amidst the memorabilia, Noa spots Mollie’s unique phone case, indicating that she, too, is a victim. Steve prepares breast meat for Noa, and she jokes that he “saved the breast for last.” Whether it’s drunken delusion or strategy, Noa loosens Steve up and confesses that she doesn’t feel awful about eating these women. Could she be turning into the same flesh-eating monster?
After their candlelit dinner, the two dance together similar to how they did in the beginning, and Noa seduces Steve. Now, for the first time, she is the one in the driver’s seat. She pulls down his pants, leading him to think she was going to do one thing, but she actually bites off his bits. How does it feel, Steve, to have part of your body ripped off of you? Not great, right? Crippled, out of breath, and completely caught off guard, Steve hobbles after Noa, who manages to escape and free Mollie and Penny. Realizing that they must scale stairs and that Penny is missing a leg, they send her up the dumbwaiter and the other two sneak up on Steve. Mollie beats him with a meat tenderizer, but doesn’t manage to completely knock him out. Penny stabs him in the leg, and Mollie does what Ann did to her earlier in the movie: bashes him over the head, wiping him out.
Let’s not forget about Paul, who has arrived at Steve’s clandestine location. The three women slowly escape through the forest, and Steve comes after them with a gun. Terrified at what he’s gotten himself into and convinced he made a wrong turn, Paul decides to bail. Ann arrives at the house with a client, and sees blood splattered everywhere. She calls Steve, and sees that his phone is left in his room. A disfigured Steve eggs Noa and her friends on, encouraging them to show their faces. Mollie tackles him, and Noa grabs his gun. Before pulling the trigger, she utters the same thing he said to her earlier in the movie: “Give me a smile.” And then, she shoots him in the head.
Ann comes across her husband’s dead body, but isn’t very phased. Her priority, she says, is to get his body on ice. She sees Noa (for the first time) in the woods and pretends to be a fellow victim. She thanks Noa for saving her, but then quickly turns her affection into strangulation. Noa stabs her in the neck with Steve’s keys, and Mollie bludgeons her with a shovel. Mollie explains that Ann is (er, was) Steve’s wife, to which Noa hilariously responds, “What? He’s married?”
This deliciously strange film ends with Mollie and Noa resting against a tree. Noa says, “I f*cking love you, Mollie,” with Mollie responding with the usual, “I love you more.” And, Noa’s phone lights up with a text message from the garbage guy she went out with at the start of the movie, which simply reads, “U up?” Hopefully the next meet-cute doesn’t become a meat-cute.
Fresh is available to stream on Hulu.