[Review] Brand New Cherry Flavor (2021)
(Spoilers for Netflix’s Brand New Cherry Flavor below)
Brand New Cherry Flavor, a horror series by Nick Antosca and Lenore Zion, follows Lisa Nova (Rosa Salazar), a young filmmaker, on a body-horror filled journey to reclaim what’s hers. Set in the backdrop of early 90s Los Angeles, the show leads us through the harrowing process of Lisa acquiring funding for her film. Lisa meets has-been director Lou Burke (Eric Lange). Things seem to take a turn for the better as he offers to take her under his wing. He presents himself to her as a mentor, someone who can show her the ropes and guide her through the entertainment business; he encourages her, praises her work, and then...he shows his true colors—he tries to take advantage of Lisa, and when she rejects him, he steals her short film.
This is when the show kicks off; enraged, Lisa seeks Boro (Catherine Keener), an eccentric cat lady she meets at an art show with Lou, to get revenge on him. Boro is a witch, and the revenge she offers Lisa comes as a curse. Boro sets a high price for her craft—Lisa pays her in kittens—I know how that sounds It takes a second to get used to Rosa Salazar puking up cute little kittens repeatedly, but much of Brand New Cherry Flavor is about the emotional and physical toll our bodies take. This gives the show’s body horror its weight—everything comes at a price. When Lisa can’t pay in kittens, she pays in her own flesh, having to sit through agonizing, sweaty pain as her body cuts into itself, creating crevices in her torso—this pain though, interestingly enough, is both excruciating and strangely erotic.
We learn Boro isn’t a friendly mentor either. She’s apathetic, selfish, and despite having a really cool posse of zombies (including a huge, silent motorcycle-riding zombie-man who collects Lisa’s puke kittens), Boro sucks. Not that she’s not a great character, in fact, she’s very entertaining to watch like many chaotic-neutral characters are. It hurts when it becomes clear that she doesn’t really care much about Lisa unless it benefits her, just as Lou doesn’t care about her either. Both “mentors” want something from her, stealing her agency away in different, horrifying ways. Brand New Cherry Flavor is at its best when it leans into this, when it shows us the brutality of each character's selfishness—Lisa included—and the fallout it causes. Lisa goes to shocking lengths in order to create her art, even before having met Boro. Her loved ones, like her close friend and ex-boyfriend Code (Manny Jacinto), ex-girlfriend and former star of her short film, Mary (Siena Werber), even near-strangers like Lou’s son Jonathan (Daniel Doheny), all get pulled in and turned into casualties (there are different deaths for everyone.).
I think this is one of my favorite aspects of Brand New Cherry Flavor, each character’s desperate moves to preserve what’s theirs. As they lured Jonathan into his father’s mess, Lou becomes increasingly desperate to do damage control, even working with Boro to get back at Lisa for placing a curse on him. Boro works for both sides, happy to watch the chaos between the two unfold, but even she’s desperate to preserve something she thinks belongs to her. For Lisa, the stakes are especially high to get her film back from Lou. It’s not only an immensely personal project to her, but it’s Lisa’s way of trying to connect with a mother who she’s never met. She believes that somehow if she can get her movie out there, her mother will see it and know it’s from her.
Brand New Cherry Flavor is complicated. It’s filled with harrowing body horror, terrifyingly supernatural motherly figures, and deceptive characters who spiral into desperation. It’s both stressful and very entertaining to watch these characters fall deeper into holes they’ve dug for each other, and heartbreaking when the aftermath results in some unfortunate deaths. It feels unfinished at the end of it all, maybe unsatisfying to some, but revenge isn’t always all that sweet.
