For Galentine’s Day, Independent Film Company and Shudder have debuted the official trailer for “Forbidden Fruits,” a slippery, blood-tinged comedy-horror from filmmaker Meredith Alloway built around the kind of sisterhood that looks immaculate under fluorescent lighting and curdles the second someone asks what it’s really for. The film stars Lili Reinhart, Lola Tung, Victoria Pedretti, Alexandra Shipp, Emma Chamberlain, and Gabrielle Union, and it is set to open in theaters on March 27, 2026.
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Alloway also co-wrote the film with Lily Houghton, and the producer lineup is a sharp tell for what lane this wants to occupy: Mason Novick, Diablo Cody (“Juno”), Trent Hubbard, and Mary Anne Waterhouse are all aboard, which reads like a conscious bet on high-concept genre that can be funny, nasty, and pointed in the same breath.
The setup is straightforward, as the best trouble always is. Apple, a Free Eden employee, secretly runs a witchy femme cult in the basement of the mall store after hours with fellow fruits Cherry and Fig. When new hire Pumpkin arrives and starts challenging their performative version of solidarity, the group is forced to confront its own toxins or head toward a “bloody fate,” as the official synopsis puts it.
The cast has the kind of cross-current energy you want for something like this: Reinhart (“Riverdale”) as the self-appointed center of gravity, Tung (“The Summer I Turned Pretty”) as the destabilizing newcomer, and Pedretti (“You”) bringing her own brand of intensity to the coven’s internal politics. Shipp and Union add further weight to the ensemble, while Chamberlain steps into a rare acting swing that’s going to draw its own spotlight regardless of how much blood gets spilled in the basement.
If there’s a clean runway for the film, it’s the calendar placement. “Forbidden Fruits” is also set for a world premiere at SXSW on March 16, 2026, before it heads into theaters later that month, giving it a festival launchpad and a quick handoff to audiences who like their horror with a little bite and a little bite-back.
And whatever the film ultimately turns out to be tonally—camp, satire, outright splatter, or some hybrid of all three—the hook is already doing the work: a retail-floor fantasy of belonging that becomes an after-hours ritual, then a stress test, then (inevitably) a reckoning. In other words, an appropriately sharp Galentine’s offering, wrapped in friendship language and hiding something hungry underneath.
“Forbidden Fruits” is now set to release in theaters on March 27, 2026. Watch the trailer below.
