Fresh, the new film starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan, has had been stirring up buzz since it premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. Disney’s Searchlight Pictures acquired the film before it had even debuted, and reviews have ranged from glowing — it’s a New York Times Critic’s Pick — to brutal. Now, viewers can watch the movie at home on Hulu and find out what all the fuss is about.
Fresh follows Noa (Edgar-Jones), a young woman who’s had enough of online dating, who starts seeing Steve (Stan), an older, charming doctor, after a chance run-in at a grocery store. At first, the relationship seems too good to be true — a fact that Noa’s best friend Mollie (Jojo T. Gibbs) doesn’t hesitate to point out. And soon enough, Noa discovers that Steve isn’t what he first appeared to be. By that point, though, it may be too late. Major spoilers for Fresh follow.
Fresh really gets going when Noa and Steve decide to take a weekend trip, first stopping at his secluded home in the woods (which, conveniently, has no phone service). Once there, Steve drugs Noa and imprisons her — something he’s done many times before to other women, Noa and the viewer learn. He runs a business, he explains to Noa, selling “fresh” meat from these women’s bodies to wealthy customers who like to eat beautiful young women.
While imprisoned, Noa works to ingratiate herself with the increasingly infatuated Steve. Soon enough, Steve begins offering her special treatment, like dinners in the upstairs part of the house — away from her basement cell — complete with food cooked from human flesh. She also befriends the woman in the cell next to hers, Penny (Andrea Bang), with whom she can communicate through a grate. Meanwhile, her friend Mollie tries to track her down, leading her to the more modest house where Steve actually lives with his wife and children. Unfortunately for Mollie, Steve’s wife Ann (Charlotte Le Bon) is also in on the scheme, and soon she’s taken to the house in the woods, too.
Noa, of course, doesn’t know about any of this: She’s just trying to escape. On a special “date” night with Steve, he shows her the wall of trophies he’s kept from his victims, which includes a pile of cell phones. She recognizes Mollie’s phone and takes action: Over the course of the evening, she gets drunk and begins to seduce Steve. In the bedroom, she briefly retreats to the bathroom before going down on him — and biting off part of his penis. When he starts screaming, she smears his face with toothpaste (which she’d put on her hands in the bathroom), steals his keys, and runs back downstairs to free Penny and Mollie. Penny is missing part of her leg, which slows their progress, and the group winds up getting into a fight with a furious Steve in the kitchen. Between the three of them, though, they leave him prone and bleeding on the floor — for a little while.
The trio flees into the woods, cell phones in hand. But without any service, they’re unable to call for help, and Steve is soon following them again … this time with a gun. Once again, they take him down, and Noa winds up shooting him in the face. They search for help, but all they can find is a seemingly deserted barn. Noa retraces her steps to look for her phone, which she’d dropped earlier, and runs into Anna, who tries to kill her for killing Steve. Mollie comes to her rescue and kills Ann. They collapse against a tree, reunited and free from danger at last.
