But it’s well worth checking out. There’s no other horror series quite like it. The first episode of Brand New Cherry Flavor starts off as a typical “go to Hollywood and follow your dreams” showbiz fairy tale. An aspiring director heads out to L.A. to meet with a hotshot movie producer who instantly options her short and hires her to adapt it into her debut feature. There are hints of the horrors to come peppered throughout the early scenes. Lisa is followed to L.A. by a mysterious motorcyclist and suffers through a hallucination of a bunch of kittens devouring a coyote carcass that sets up a delightful recurring kitten motif that’s both unsettling and adorable.
RELATED: This Netflix Horror Adaptation Wastes Perfectly Good Source Material
When Brand New Cherry Flavor really gets going, it feels like a David Lynch movie with the cartoonish visuals and dry, dark humor of Jim Jarmusch’s vision of horror seen in The Dead Don’t Die. With its cocktail of horror motifs and Hollywood sleaze, it would appear that Lynch’s biggest influence on the show was Mulholland Drive (Patrick Fischler even has a supporting role), but the series takes inspiration from all over Lynch’s filmography. Lisa is an everywoman surrounded by evil who’s forced to confront the evil in herself, similar to Kyle MacLachlan’s everyman in Blue Velvet. Catherine Keener’s Boro fills the role of Lost Highway’s “Mystery Man.” She’s an eccentric supernatural character enveloped in ambient noise, possibly a visitor from another dimension, who freezes a crowded party scene to introduce the protagonist to the story’s spookiest elements.
Keener is a joy to watch as always, bringing her usual indie-movie nuanced naturalism but also indulging in the fun of playing a bonkers horror character with clairvoyant powers. This performance evokes Keener’s turn as teacup-clinking psychopath Missy Armitage in Get Out. As great as Keener’s supporting turn is, though, Salazar carries Brand New Cherry Flavor on her shoulders with a spectacular lead performance. Lisa is a ruthlessly ambitious artist who uncovers her own dark side in her quest to express herself. Lisa has the fierce vengeful drive of a Pam Grier heroine and the existential crisis of Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter Island, and Salazar nails both sides of the role.
The show becomes a revenge story in the shocking final scene of its first episode. Lisa gets chewed up and spit out by the Hollywood machine (and, more horrifyingly, harassed, abused, assaulted, and gaslit by a piece of human garbage) in the space of a couple of days. With nothing left to lose, she teams up with Keener’s mysterious undead witch-queen to plague her attacker with a curse. The desire for vengeance as a result of feeling powerless in a situation is universally relatable. When the series takes a disturbing turn into full-blown surreal terror, it contrasts the horrors of a sleazeball-infested Hollywood with the horrors of zombies, witch curses, and human-kitten birthing rituals.
The show takes place in the ‘90s, but it offers a timely, uncompromising portrayal of the monsters within the film industry that were exposed by the #MeToo movement. The Weinsteins and Ratners and Spaceys of Hollywood are all distilled into one truly hateable villain named Lou Burke, played with ample smarm, arrogance, and violent menace by Eric Lange. Lou starts meeting with new directors for Lisa’s movie after she rejects his unwanted sexual advances. The series’ increasing use of unnerving horror imagery coincides with the ugly side of Hollywood revealing itself through Lou’s reprehensible behavior.
With a truly unique vision of horror, Brand New Cherry Flavor is a must-see for fans of the genre. The series uses a classic spookshow to peel away the facade of glitz and glamor in the unscrupulous film industry. Its bizarre Lynchian imagery in the context of Hollywood satire plays like a pulpier, grislier version of Mulholland Drive. Like Mulholland Drive, Brand New Cherry Flavor kicks off as a romantic peek behind the curtain into the magic of movie-making before that curtain is abruptly torn down by supernatural forces and monsters of the human and inhuman variety.
MORE: This Horror Masterpiece Has No Signs Of Horror For The First Hour
