A Fresh Take on the Horrors of Dating

Dating isn’t fun. Especially in the world of online dating and dating apps. Social media has warped perception to make relationships seem unattainable, yet somehow simple. In reality, it’s hard to figure out if the person is genuine, messing around, or someone else entirely. So, dating isn’t fun. Dating is hard, particularly for marginalized communities. If they so much as deny giving out their number it could put them in danger. Exploiting societal fears is one of the ways the horror genre has adapted over its life, and there is nothing more current as a horror story based on dating. Some of the biggest horror films in the past few years such as It Follows (2015), Get Out (2017), Midsommar (2019), and I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020) all start with the union between two people. Mimi Cave’s directorial debut Fresh (2022) is an odd mix of social commentary and eccentric eating habits that make even the worst of dates seem like child's play.

 Feminist film theorists always talk about the male gaze and how it’s been applied to a piece of media; whether that be through the objectification or sexualization of the women on screen, it all comes down to the fact that men are gaining something from the experience. So what happens when a woman employs the male gaze to prove a point? Some would say it would become the female gaze, but the answer is somewhere in the middle. In Fresh, the audience is first introduced to the lead – Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) – in the mirror of a car. Noa isn’t shown in full, but rather parts of her face as she gets ready for her date. But how is this different from if a male director had done this film? The theory tells us that through the male gaze women are only on-screen to be objects of desire or to make the men lust after the woman. What’s different here is that these pieces of Noa being shown aren’t supposed to be seen sexually. Cave and cinematographer Pawel Pogorzelski have created an atmosphere that tells the audience that this technique is used to show the feeling of the male gaze while not falling into its pitfalls.

Dating feels like being picked apart, scrutinized, and judged for every small action or piece of your body. The whole dance is uncomfortable and people – like Noa – have grown to hate the performance. Pogorzelski, who is known for his work on Ari Aster’s horror films, develops this environment by speaking to the audience cinematically. Shots like quick pans to disorientating angles contrast with stagnant long takes to set the uneasy tone. For example, after Noa’s first date the visual style grows darker as she walks to her car. The camera – that was earlier moving along slowly with her – picks up its pace as she runs from a mysterious figure. Then as the figure is creeping closer to her, the style changes to quick cuts to show how frantic she is. This not only quickens the pace of the scene, but also the pulse of the audience indicating the fear that is to come in the rest of the film. But since the figure in this sequence turns out to be a benign father carrying his child, it also sets Noa up as unreliable.

Then Fresh takes a step back from outright creepy to introduce Steve (Sebastian Stan). Through the language of horror, and by proxy cinema as a whole, viewers are led to believe that everyone on screen is safe during the day. So when Noa meets Steve in a brightly lit grocery store, the first instinct is to believe nothing bad can happen. This is supported by Pogorzelski’s camera as it stays focused on them with very few cuts to interrupt the meeting. Then again when they go on their first date, the camera takes on an almost lazy feel as it floats around them. Even when very obvious red flags start to pile up around Steve, the viewer is content to go along with Noa because of the framing and movement of the camera. It’s these slow realizations mixed with blurring edges and dutch angles that raise alarms, but the film has already fallen off the edge and the dreamy shots morph into dizzying movements as Steve’s true personality becomes apparent.

Fresh is a film that doesn’t rely on gore or cheap tricks to scare audiences. The horror of this film lies in the quiet moments of conversation at dinner. And while the story is enjoyable, the camera work is where this film shines. It picks up the slack when the story doesn’t fully explore options that seem rather apparent like Ann’s (Charlotte Le Bon) involvement or if Noa has acquired Steve’s taste in meat. These could be questions that are up to interpretation, but it leaves the ending rather untidy. Regardless, Fresh is a film tackling deep-rooted fears and mixes that with startlingly funny dialogue which comes together to make for a highly entertaining watch.