“Forbidden Fruits,” a new horror-comedy from first-time feature director Meredith Alloway, now playing in theaters, delves into the lives of four young women who operate a secret after-hours coven in the basement of a Dallas mall boutique called Free Eden. Adapted from playwright Lily Houghton’s stage work “Of the Woman Came the Beginning of Sin, and Through Her We All Die,” the film stars Lili Reinhart as Apple, Victoria Pedretti as Cherry, Alexandra Shipp as Fig, and Lola Tung as Pumpkin. This unique film, which premiered at SXSW, has already drawn comparisons to cult classics like “Mean Girls,” “The Craft,” and “Jawbreaker,” and notably, “Jennifer’s Body.”

Oscar-winning writer Diablo Cody, who produced “Forbidden Fruits” alongside Mason Novick, has a deeply personal connection to the film’s reception. Sixteen years ago, her own horror-comedy, “Jennifer’s Body,” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival to a lukewarm, misunderstood audience. Cody recalls realizing “nobody got it” in that moment. Fast forward to “Forbidden Fruits” at SXSW, and the experience was vastly different. She found it “healing” to witness audiences finally “getting” a witchy, female-led dark comedy, even though she didn’t direct it. This time, comparisons to “Jennifer’s Body” are a compliment, signifying a shift in the cultural landscape.

Cody and Novick were captivated by Alloway and Houghton’s pitch, describing it as “one of the most imaginative, fleshed out, exhaustive, magical pitches” they had ever heard, leading them to greenlight the project before a script even existed. As a creative producer, Cody’s expertise lies in story development, meticulously reviewing drafts and guiding the narrative. Their production company specializes in a sub-genre Hollywood long dismissed: the female-led satirical horror comedy – sharp-tongued and unapologetically weird. The box office failure of “Jennifer’s Body” had stifled Cody’s ability to make similar films until “Lisa Frankenstein.” However, the rise of online communities, particularly Tumblr subcultures and queer online spaces, ultimately rewrote “Jennifer’s Body’s” legacy, proving the audience was always there, just lacking a public forum. Cody emphasizes that “The infrastructure had finally caught up to the stories,” contrasting the current “Forbidden Fruits” marketing campaign with how “Jennifer’s Body” was misdirected towards a male audience.

At the heart of “Free Eden,” the boutique, Apple (Lili Reinhart) secretly runs a witchy femme cult with Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) and Fig (Alexandra Shipp). The arrival of new hire Pumpkin (Lola Tung) challenges their performative sisterhood, forcing them to confront their own hidden “poisons.” Lily Houghton describes the film’s pitch as “‘Mean Girls,’ but a slasher,” drawing inspiration from films like “Jennifer’s Body.” For Houghton, the film was a deeply personal endeavor, born from her experiences working retail after her father’s death, where she “retreated into girlhood and used that as protection.” She aimed to elevate voices often dismissed as “girly or silly or dumb,” showcasing “what’s boiling right beneath.”

The film intricately explores its characters and themes. Lili Reinhart’s Apple sees herself as the “ultimate feminist” and “girl’s girl,” yet she is driven by a need for adoration and control, stemming from a lack of love in her family. Lola Tung’s Pumpkin embodies the biblical motif of the “snake in the garden,” entering as a skeptic whose presence disrupts the group’s fragile paradise, perhaps not as an innocent, but as a catalyst. Pumpkin, however, genuinely seeks belonging and sisterhood, even if her intense desire ultimately “cracks everything open.” Victoria Pedretti’s Cherry is portrayed as the coven’s earnest and loyal heart, often in over her head, with her loyalty to Apple superseding self-preservation. Alexandra Shipp’s Fig, in contrast, has fully embraced the coven’s ethos, having “drunk the Kool-Aid entirely.”

Meredith Alloway and Lily Houghton emphasize that the true nature of the magic—whether it’s real or not—is less important than the characters’ belief in it, leaving it open to audience interpretation. Ultimately, “Forbidden Fruits” explores female relationships when “men aren’t the point,” a refreshing take in a genre often focused on competition for male attention. The filmmakers insist that the women themselves are not the antagonists. Alloway aptly states, “these women are trying to build a garden in a cement block,” with the real villain being “expectations of women,” “capitalist systems,” and “quite literally the mall itself.” Houghton echoes this, suggesting that without these societal systems, the women would be “dancing in a forest, summoning the goddesses, and not killing each other.”

Diablo Cody praises the film’s “aesthetic coquette, toxic female friendship, deep, biblical, intellectual sauce” and highlights the importance of its “sparkly cast” and strong material in attracting talent. She finds the narrative genuinely new and unpredictable, hoping audiences will leave feeling “invigorated and inspired.” Cody is optimistic about the future of such stories, asserting that “There has never been a better time to tell these stories. The audience is there now,” signaling a new era for female-led, genre-bending cinema.