10 More Horror Movies Way Darker Than Advertised

10. Fresh (2022)

Positioned as a quirky abduction horror, Mimi Cave’s feature film debut Fresh turns out to be anything but.

You know the story: girl (Daisy Edgar-Jones’ Noa) meets mysterious and handsome boy (Sebastian Stan’s Steve), they date, they fall head over heels, and then... boy drugs, kidnaps and keeps her as his latest plaything? It’s not pretty, but it’s not uncommon in the realm of horror – and we assume we’ve seen it all before, until we haven’t.

Fresh has an added twist to the time-honoured story that was not well signposted in the marketing material. Steve doesn’t want to assault, torture or otherwise use Noa; he wants to cut her up and sell her. Now, the cannibal killer is bad enough, but the consumer-cannibal killer is another beast altogether. Once safely chained up in Steve’s high-tech basement, Steve “takes her ass” (exactly as it sounds), and Noa discovers she’s not alone. Things only get grimmer from there.

The film slowly bleeds ever-darker details as it progresses, starting with the fact that Steve keeps his victims alive as long as possible while he dismantles them, over weeks, months - maybe even years. And the girls in the adjoining cells to Noa are in various states of disrepair and insanity, missing more than a few of their essential parts. By the time we get to Steve’s demise, the grisly violence is the least of our concerns.