It was sundown in Austin, Texas when Sarah Millman realized she was onto something. The costume designer was looking at photos from the SXSW Film & TV Festival, where her film Forbidden Fruitsmade its debut earlier this month. “We had a cosplayer show up,” says Millman. The young woman had copied the actress Victoria Pedretti’s signature look from the campy satire about witches who work in a mall—white fringe cowboy boots, baby pink bloomers, a criminally tiny striped cardigan, and a pink Stanley cup with metallic pink stickers. “She copied [the look from] the trailer,” said Millman. “But even before the movie came out, she was on it so fast.”
A similar surprise happened last weekend in Manhattan, when a fan arrived at the Forbidden Fruits opening night in a gingham Reformation dress worn by Lola Tung in the film. She topped it with the same glass heart choker from Urban Outfitters. “On projects, producers will always say, ‘We want this to be a Halloween costume,’” says Millman from her home in Toronto. “The truth is, you never know if that will actually happen. But I did sense, from the beginning of [Forbidden Fruits], that this was something different.”
Forbidden Fruits is a 103-minute flick that slashes and burns its way through a typical Texas mall. The “fruits” in the title are Apple (Lili Reinhart), Cherry (Pedretti), Fig (Alexandra Shipp), and Pumpkin (Tung), a quartet of witch-curious young women who work at a pointelle-cardigan hellscape called Free Eden. (Yes, it’s a goof on Free People, where screenwriter Lily Houghton worked after college.) The denim-clad coven casts spells, confesses sins, chugs mocha lattes, enchants clueless customers and lovestruck food court employees, and maybe commits murder for funsies.
The film is a vicious “hey babe” satire in the vein of The Craft, Heathers, Jennifer’s Body, and Mean Girls. That means Millman had to know everything about those movies while staying conscious of moving beyond them—and keeping the film’s core starlets in the loop on their characters. “It was a little intimidating,” Millman says. “These are wildly stylish young women, and there can be an assumption—I’m just going to say it—that working in Canada means you don’t have internet access, or something. But none of them came in with that energy at all. They were so open.”
Lola Tung wears a dress from Reformation.
Millman notes that when she began talking to Emma Chamberlain, who makes her movie debut as a clique cast-off named Pickle, “she actually sent me a small lookbook—including a pair of ballet flats that looked like someone had worn them around the mall for exactly three and a half years.” Chamberlain asked that every cottonminidress she wore in the film be hemmed “so, so short” to reference ‘60s horror heroines like Shelley Duvall and Mia Farrow. For her part, Reinhart made a Pinterest board that essentially “manifested” the character of Apple into being, loading it with Rebecca Mojica vampire chokers and subversive graphic tees. And Pedretti “showed up to set one day and was like, ‘I brought this scrunchie,’ and it was perfect,” says Millman. “Victoria has a really brilliant mind. So that was our nod to Heathers.”
No mall movie is complete without tons (and tons) of denim—but that gets complicated on a horror set with buckets of fake blood, constant spell-casting with smoke and wax, and manicures so sharp they can poke holes in fabric. Enter American Eagle, the beloved teen mall brand that stocked Forbidden Fruits with enough denim so that every outfit could have a style stunt double. That included Tung’s teeny pleated skort, Shipp’s floaty boho blouse, Reinhart’s black denim capris (worn with a witchy corset top, of course), and Pedretti’s butt-hugging bootcut flares. In one memorable scene, Tung chases Chamberlain inside an American Eagle store after spotting her Susan Alexandra charm bracelet on the floor.
Behind the scenes of Forbidden Fruits.
That scene was more silly than scary, but Millman says Forbidden Fruits’ horror elements were impossible to ignore during production. “Shooting this film in an abandoned mall overnight was creepy as hell,” she shares. “I found myself, like, running to get back to wardrobe because I was like, ‘This is too eerie.’ Then one of the girls said it was a blood moon. That was the night we actually shot the first scene where they cast spells.”
Millman worried they’d invoked an actual hex when candle wax from an onscreen coven ritual dripped directly onto Reinhart’s Rodarte dress. “I was like, ‘Oh no, we went too far, we actually cursed ourselves!’” The studio budget helped buy another Rodarte gown, marking the first—and perhaps only—time that movie magic surpassed actual magic and saved the day.
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