Netflix’s horror opus is a lucid love letter to revenge that thrives on nightmare logic, unhinged performances, and Hollywood’s fake veneer.
“Curses aren’t real.”
There’s a line of dialogue early on in Nick Antosca and Lenore Zion’s Brand New Cherry Flavor where a character innocently remarks, “You know those nights where every twenty minutes you wake up from a different dream?” That feeling is exactly the chaotic, dizzying, surrealist energy that courses through Brand New Cherry Flavor at every single moment.
Brand New Cherry Flavor begins in an aggressive place that only grows more visceral. It’s full of moody sequences that are bathed in neon light and juxtaposed with uncomfortably extreme close-ups of the human body. It’s the non-existent Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk adaptation that you didn’t know you wanted from a story that’s more layered than what either of them could devise. It’s what Neon Demon should have been. It’s a series that bursts with a glossy look and satirical sheen that’s gloriously in excess. The art design, costumes, and every inch of set dressing work overtime, but in a way that feels infinitely natural. It simultaneously contains some of the wildest visuals and ideas from Antosca’s (Channel Zero, Hannibal, The Act) oeuvre that unravel in a slow Rube Goldberg-like nature that shows that revenge–and curses–take time to be done right. And boy does Brand New Cherry Flavor do it right. It’s a neon-soaked nightmare-fueled exploration of identity, sexuality, and the artificial constructs that perpetuate their exploitation.
Brand New Cherry Flavor is largely filtered through the erratic personality of Lisa Nova (Rosa Salazar) in her efforts to take 1990s Hollywood by storm. She’s convinced that her hot, new independent short will revolutionize the film industry. This is a story about the inherent power that not only exists inside of women, but how people are desperate to sap this strength for themselves. It’s a perspective that fits Hollywood like a sequined glove as fabricated personalities struggle to sell themselves and their art, but more importantly, learn to accentuate how the spectacular can be hiding in plain sight. Lisa Nova is a character that’s overly ripe when it comes to her desires for the real her to be seen, but it’s also accompanied by a white-hot rage that festers whenever this version of herself is denied and belittled.
Lisa’s discouraging journey begins in a manner that’s meant to feel intentionally traditional and common. Thousands of naïve, optimistic ingenues experience this every year in Los Angeles. She’s repeatedly told that she’s just one in a million. Lisa’s pedestrian origins only strengthen her gradual transformation that asserts why she’s anything but ordinary and actually a phenomenal and unpredictable agent of change. Brand New Cherry Flavor scratches at the surface of complex territory with Lisa’s manipulation and her subsequent revenge plans. It’s naturally difficult to see her get abused, but the actions that she takes are arguably overkill. This forces the audience to reckon with whether Lisa deserves to achieve any of this or if she’s somehow even worse than those that she takes down. Perhaps humility and better coping skills would be a far healthier plan of attack for Lisa.
The audience innately empathizes with Lisa, but each episode entertains the idea that maybe the best solution to all of this would be for her to be taken down. Would audiences rally so hard behind John Wick if the villain just took away the final cut from his debut film rather than killing his dog? That’s almost the question that Brand New Cherry Flavor asks its audience to consider, which seems insane, but it actually makes perfect sense in this artificial world that it constructs. Lisa doesn’t lose a pet, spouse, or child. She’s sad about the loss of her movie, which in Lisa’s lonely existence is more important than all of these things combined. It adds a fascinating wrinkle to this mission where it’s celluloid art that puts all of this horror in motion, which is certainly fitting with Brand New Cherry Flavor’s themes.
Brand New Cherry Flavor is a triumph of tone and upsetting imagery, but it also hits as hard as it does because of the performances that bring these characters to life. Rosa Salazar is an absolute revelation as Lisa Nova. Salazar has been an actor to watch for years now and she’s progressively gotten more exciting opportunities. However, Brand New Cherry Flavor is the showpiece that she deserves and will hopefully garner her even greater attention. She negotiates so many complicated emotions in ways that are just gutting. There are entire episodes where Lisa is strung out on a heightened drug trip and Salazar is able to maintain her wide-eyed invaluable intensity for the full runtime without any of it feeling like a repetitive schtick.
The series also negotiates the unlikely pairing between Lisa Nova and her producer, Lou Burke (Eric Lange), who are at opposite ends of this, but have similar passions. Their relationship gets poisoned in the way that L.A. can taint and misrepresent the many things that get fetishized by Lisa and the people that are in the social circles which she strives to enter. To Brand New Cherry Flavor’s credit, it strangely finds a way to almost humanize Lou after it seemingly pushes him to beyond the point of redemption.
Brand New Cherry Flavor is Rosa Salazar’s show to steal, but Catherine Keener as the mysterious Boro is also on a whole other level. This is some of the best work that she’s ever done, which is saying something for the consistent actress. It honestly feels like she’s doing her best Lin Shaye impression as her character walks out of the eerie party from Lost Highway. She’s absolutely chilling and Keener needs to tackle more horror. Boro’s backstory grows increasingly fascinating and it routinely subverts the expectations of what it looks like it’s setting up.
In Brand New Cherry Flavor, Lou tries to force intimacy with Lisa, but the series is also very interested in the shared bond between punisher and sufferer. It argues that there’s inherent pain in intimacy and that it’s its own form of collective trauma. There are some overwhelming sequences that juxtapose pain on top of each other as a way to connect abuser and victim in a disturbingly powerful way. It’s moving that Lisa’s roaring rampage of revenge causes such significant fallout and sheds so much blood, yet at its core, this is just a story about acceptance and culpability that any person can relate with on some level. Brand New Cherry Flavor just delivers it in such haunting and uncomfortable ways that effectively emulate Lisa’s surreal trip to Hollywood.
All of Nick Antosca’s previous horror projects are goldmines of nightmare fuel. Brand New Cherry Flavor dips its cloven hoof into voodoo and witchcraft territory that feels both genuinely upsetting and original. It forces a look inward which prompts great character studies in a natural way. The horror series also has the impeccable ability to take innocuous things like cats or plants and turn them into supernatural conduits of dread. Brand New Cherry Flavor evokes a lot of haunted magical realism, but in the best way possible. It feels like a curse gets unleashed early on in the series and this heavy dread is felt more in every entry.
Brand New Cherry Flavor also contains one of the most disturbing mixes of body horror and sexual expression since Crash or Videodrome. Cronenberg gets explicitly name-dropped in the series, but this show deserves kudos for what it contributes to the subset of horror. It’s unreal. Admittedly, there are few situational scares that feel slightly contrived in their executions, like how Lisa’s Ayahuasca-esque drug trip just happens to come with a side effect of Cenobites. At the same time, these visuals are still super effective so they’re easy to excuse.
All of the directors, which includes Gandja Monteiro, Jake Schreier, Matt Sobel (the director of the upcoming Goodnight Mommy remake), and Arkasha Stevenson (Legion, Channel Zero: Butcher’s Block), guarantee every episode is filled with arresting imagery. The series also makes exceptional use of cover songs to recognizable music, which continues to hammer in the series’ themes of transformation.
Netflix has a reliable roster of limited series horror programming that makes offerings like Brand New Cherry Flavor easy to give a chance. However, Brand New Cherry Flavor is such a frightening, refreshing change of pace. Just when it feels like the series verges on predictability it takes a wicked turn and at only eight episodes it doesn’t suffer any problems with pacing. Brand New Cherry Flavor tells an important, timely story that often feels like a new season of Channel Zero, but with an even bigger scope and mission to provoke. Brand New Cherry Flavor provides the perfect taste for horror fans, and audiences won’t ever want to cleanse their palates.
All eight episodes of “Brand New Cherry Flavor” premiere on August 13th, only on Netflix.
