Brand New Cherry Flavor - One of the Most Disturbing and Disgusting Horror Series I have Ever Seen

During last weekend, I saw more than one movie but I was a bit lazy to write the review of the films and only managed to write one post. This limited series did intrigue me and after few days, I finally completed it. So here's more.

Brief Story Line

Story was set in the 1990s where a young movie director named Lisa Nova (Rosa Salazar - Alita: Battle Angel, Maze Runner: The Death Cure etc) went to Los Angeles to have a meeting with Lou Burke (Eric Lange - Narcos TV series etc) a successful producer. Lou promised Lisa that she would produce a full length feature of her short movie that obviously made her ecstatic. She was also introduced to a major Hollywood star named Roy Hardaway (Jeff Ward - Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D TV series etc) who seemed to take an interest on her.

Later Lisa met with a mysterious woman who called herself Boro (Catherine Keener - Sicario: Day of the Soldado, Into the Wild etc). She would have major impact on Lisa's life, especially after she was betrayed and her dream was shattered. As Lisa tried to get her revenge, she soon would find that her decision could destroy the life of people around her.

So what would happen to Lisa? Find them all in this horror limited series

End of Brief Story Line

Well this has got to be one of the most disturbing and also disgusting series I had ever watched. When I saw the first episode, it began quite normal with the introduction of the main characters and few mysterious people. There were also some surprising scenes which probably was quite relevant to the disclosures of the unhealthy movie industry. But that was almost nothing compared to the scene towards the end of the episode which was shocking and nauseating. The following episodes were filled with lot of weirdness and more disgusting scenes plus some horrifying images & jump scare as well. So it is a pretty complete horror series. 

This limited series (yes limited as in no 2nd season) actually has a pretty interesting story of how the movie industry worked behind the scene in the 90s and should still be relevant to the condition now. The plot could actually be summarized as "revenge that got out of hand", but to me personally they put too many things into the mix and made it a bit out of focus. After few episodes, I started to feel the story did not develop too much and probably could have been shortened to 6 episodes rather than extending it to 8.

The cast in the series were generally wonderful, especially the 4 main characters. I think critics singled out Rosa Salazar's performance in here and I am agreeable with their assessment. There were also other recurring characters like Lisa's old boyfriend Code (Manny Jacinto - The Good Place TV series etc), his new girlfriend Christine (Hannah Levien), Lou's son Jonathan (Daniel Doheny), Mary the actress in Lisa's film (Siena Weber) and few others who were quite important in the story development. But of all the characters in here, I liked Roy Hardaway (portrayed very nicely by Jeff Ward) the most. He was just a likable person and a character that I really rooted. 

For a series set in the 90s, they did quite well in creating the 90s feel with the costumes and the vehicles, although the make up (hair do in particular) did not really scream 90s. Some nice familiar songs also played in the background Oh, I saw that the series was adapted from novel of the same title written by Todd Grimson. It was created for Television by Nick Antosca (creator of Channel Zero TV series and The Act series) with Lenore Zion. Of all the 8 episodes, I liked the first one because despite that disgusting scene, it actually raised my curiosity of what would come next, and I also liked the 5th episode titled "Jennifer" due to that shocking scene of the short movie Lisa made. I was not a big fan of the final episode as the ending was not something that I favor with different fate of the main and recurring characters.

Overall, I am still OK with the series. I might not have liked all the aspects and the overly long episodes which could have been shortened, but I quite liked the story. The horror was not too terrifying but the background story of the movie industry was definitely interesting. It would have been more satisfying for me if some of the characters have different ending because frankly I was not too happy with them. I noticed that Netflix put maturity rating 18+ with attributes of violence, sex, nudity, language, substances and animal harm. So if you are not ready with this kind of features in a series, I would recommend to skip this one and only watch if you have the stomach for it.

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