Sunday, April 17, 2022

Fresh - A Fresh Reminder to Always be on Alert When Searching for Love

This was another movie that I watched on Friday night which intrigued me with its premise. It was released on Disney+ with a mature rating for 21+, something that still surprised me to see in this platform. Anyway, I'll just go ahead with the movie now.

Brief Story Line

Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones - War of the Worlds TV series etc) was a young woman who had been unsuccessful in finding love in the world where dating were mostly done through apps or social medias. So when she met a man named Steve (Sebastian Stan - The 355, The Martian etc) through an old fashioned way and he seemed genuinely normal, Noa was immediately attracted to him. 

As things became more serious, Noa decided to go with Steve for a weekend getaway, despite the worry from her best friend Mollie (Jonica T. Gibbs - Twenties TV series etc).

So would Noa finally meet the man of her dreams? Or was it too good to be true? Find them all in this interesting comedy thriller horror movie. 

End of Brief Story Line

When I started watching this movie, I felt that this one seemed like an ordinary rom-com where the female lead was trying to find the love of her life but found that it was a very difficult dream to achieve. There was also the standard best friend who was giving her various advice and perspectives. So when Noa finally met with Steve, the story went to a familiar territory. Not until the movie progressed quite a while that things got really interesting.

Beyond that, the film suddenly picked up the pace and there was a bit of horrifying sense due to very disturbing stuff. It was pretty dark and as I said, surprised me that such movie could be shown on Disney+, especially with few very brief nudity in here. After reading more on this movie, I found out that it was first released on Hulu (a more mature streaming platform owned by Disney), so it would explain such premise. But seeing that there had been few movies with mature theme released on Disney+ in the past few months, I gather that they are now more open to such options. Don't get me wrong, this actually delighted me and my wife, though probably not so much for parents who always thought Disney+ would be totally safe for their kids. 

Back to the movie itself, the story was quite intriguing and I thought that Sebastian Stan and Daisy Edgar-Jones were quite good in here with nice chemistry too. In addition to Jonica T. Gibbs, there were also other support cast such as Dayo Okeniyi (Terminator Genisys etc) as Paul, Charlotte Le Bon (The Walk etc) as Ann and Andrea Bang (Kim's Convenience TV series etc) as Penny. I will let you see for yourselves to find out what kind of characters they were in this movie. Mostly they did their job adequately.

While watching this movie, I personally felt that there was a bit too much detail during the middle part. It might give proper context but I actually felt it was too long. Yes it was supposed to build a momentum towards the finale, but if it was done a bit shorter, perhaps I would have admired the movie even more. It has a duration of 114 minutes with only a brief mid credit scene and if you see closely during the closing credit, there was something in the background which gave some perspective. Btw, the finale itself was wonderful and truly satisfying for me. Oh some background songs were nice, in particular one of my old favorites Endless Summer Nights by Richard Marx.

This movie was directed by Mimi Cave and written by Lauryn Kahn in what was their both feature film debut. After finishing the movie, I had a feeling that this one would be loved by critics and it turned out to be correct. It was indeed well received with pretty high critical ratings. And audience seemed to quite enjoy it as well. So if you are looking for unique comedy thriller with a bit of disturbing (some might say horrifying) story on what seemed to be a reminder to always be ready for anything in the search of love, then most likely you would enjoy this one. 

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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