When the group first encounters Sister Salt’s employee Pumpkin (Lola Tung), Apple won’t let the other girls talk to her because her pretzel eatery is “bottom of the food chain”. But after she charms Fig (“My job doesn’t define me; my hotness and my personality do,” she tells her), Pumpkin—her actual name—becomes the cult’s fourth member and, with the autumnal fruit, completes the retail cycle. She is welcomed into a coven with strict rules and strange customs, including confessing one’s sins to Marilyn Monroe and only texting boys in emojis, while Queen Bee Apple stresses that their magic isn’t some “witchtok ripoff fluffy bunny bullshit”. After a brief honeymoon period, the cracks in their friendship are put to the test when they suspect there is a snake in their Free Eden garden, while Pumpkin uncovers a dark secret about the witch she replaced (Emma Chamberlain).

Produced by Jennifer’s Body and Lisa Frankenstein writer Diablo Cody, Forbidden Fruits is the chic, messy Gen Z sister to her brand of female-driven horror comedy. As an irresistible genre mash-up—soundtracked by both spooky strings and Slayyyter—a similar cult status is inevitable. The film’s beating pulse is the clever script from director Meredith Alloway and Lily Houghton, the playwright behind the source material, which both pokes fun and interrogates the complexities of zillennial female friendship with a firm grasp on the times. Filled with commentary as sharp as three of Apple’s bright-red nails, the laugh-a-minute screenplay references everything from The Devil Wears Prada to The Shining to side-splitting effect without letting up on the uneasy ambience and dramatic tension. Forbidden Fruits also makes good use of its R-rating, with its gross-out gore and a funny yet sensitive storyline exploring sexuality differentiating it from the female-led teen-oriented cult films that it draws from.