“Bless your heart.”

Fellow lifelong Texas residents will no doubt have heard that phrase countless times in their lives. It’s a trio of words epitomizing the bizarre paradoxes of Texan culture. Externally kind but intrinsically condescending contradictions like that exist all throughout the Lone Star State. A suburban domicile like Allen, Texas once living by the slogan “keeping it country.” Now it houses a sprawling mall and HEB supermarket. Dallas denizens will wear spurs and cowboy hats while waltzing around a ritzy Neiman-Marcus. Texas politicians will stress the importance of “small government” while intruding on marginalized people’s lives.

Even this expansive state housing so many varying geographies (from concrete-heavy cities to the rural domains of West Texas) speaks to how Texas is, as a wise Patrick Star once declared, “an enigma.” Look no further than Texans constantly spouting “bless your heart” to each other while barely suppressing severe contempt. Dallas, Texas-originating writer/director Meredith Alloway uses this state’s incongruous nature to inform the aesthetic of her movie Forbidden Fruits. Here are a bunch of characters who aren’t just paradoxical. They’re also constantly sharing pop culture-laden Gen Z barbs equivalent to “bless your heart.”

At the Highland Place Mall, Free Eden employees Apple (Lili Reinhart), Fig (Alexandra Shipp), and Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) are royalty. Everyone stares at the trio in awe, basking in their confidence, beauty, and prowess. Apple is the group’s strict leader, and that sternness includes keeping minimum contact with other mall workers (particularly boys). However, when former pretzel seller Pumpkin (Lola Tung) applies for a Free Eden job, these three gals take the newcomer under their wing.

Specifically, they invite Pumpkin to join their coven. Apple, Fig, and Cherry have created a sisterhood bond based upon classifying themselves as “witches.” Now it’s time for Pumpkin to join their ranks. Expanding this trio to a quartet initially seems like a dream come true. Apple especially takes a shine to their newest recruit. However, the frayed edges of this friend group quickly become apparent. Sure, they’re always talking about “women supporting women.” However, Highland Place Mall’s elite employees have a lot of narrowly suppressed hostility towards each other.

Alloway and fellow screenwriter Lily Houghton (the latter adapting her play) execute this premise with heavy doses of dark humor and blunt verbiage. Apple is always cutting down Cherry (“you always have to make yourself the main character, that’s another one of your unattractive qualities”). She also treats everyone besides her three confidantes with enough above-it-all self-satisfaction to make Kuzco blush. It’s all incredibly fun and humorous. Messy and unhinged women are just irresistibly entertaining, especially when they’re written and performed this well.

Both the Forbidden Fruits script and the primary actors are terrific at making Apple, Fig, Cherry, and Pumpkin distinctly different and riveting creations. Overlaps exist in some of their verbiage and pop culture references (particularly amongst the three leads who’re already friends at the films start). However, the specificities Reinhart, Pedretti, Shipp, and Tung bring to their respective performances breathe individual life into their roles. This achievement already makes Forbidden Fruits a joy when it’s just about their tremendous chemistry. This ensures intimate sequences like an early incantation ritual or the quartet dancing after hours to a cover of Bryan Adams’ “Heaven” excel.

As an uncultured swine who hasn’t seen either The Haunting of Hill House or The Haunting of Bly Manor, Victoria Pedretti was my biggest discovery watching Forbidden Fruits. For the film’s first half, Pedretti delivers terrifically amusing work living up to the legacy of Amanda Seyfried in Mean Girls or Tara Reid in Josie and the Pussycats as the absent-minded blonde girlie in a friend group. Her masterful delivery of lines like “we were supposed to go on a whimsical walk after work!” or her squealing the word “therapy” as Cherry bounces out of Free Alone alone easily ensures her performance is no hollow pastiche of those earlier turns.

However, in the second half of Forbidden Fruits, things begin spiraling out of control for the film’s four leads. Chaos and lies start bubbling to the surface and become unavoidable. In this section of the feature, Pedretti is transfixing depicting Cherry’s haunted and pained side. There’s a sequence solely focusing on Cherry speaking to a mirror (it’s the “coven’s” version of a confessional). Here, she relays the horrors and psychological torment she goes through every day. It’s a mesmerizingly raw turn that Pedretti handles with such finesse. It’s especially impressive how this sequence evokes her earlier acting while uncovering a largely concealed corner of this Free Eden employee.

This tremendous display of nuanced performing epitomizes how, much like “bless your heart” disguising tangible Texan contempt, the opening scenes of Forbidden Fruits conceal a much darker feature lying in wait. This transition works because of several factors, including the surface-level reason that both Forbidden Fruits modes are wickedly entertaining. However, the constant presence of hysterical dark comedy makes the tonal shift go down smoothly. Of course a movie featuring Apple “complimenting” a potential customer by saying “Is there sand in your ass crack? Because you’re giving beach” would have more unhinged tricks up its sleeve.

It isn’t just the nuanced Forbidden Fruits tone or its constant serving of memorably ribald dialogue deserving major kudos. Costume design Sarah Millman absolutely ate (and left nary a crumb afterward) with this film’s outfits. In the very first Forbidden Fruits scene, Apple, Cherry, and Fig strut over to the food court for lunch. They’re all decked out in incredibly distinctive, fun outfits setting the stage for the barrage of iconic attire to come. Cherry especially gets some of the best garbs in the entire feature. A lavish strawberry-covered dress she dons for a dressing room sexual rendezvous and a black dress with heart-shaped holes over her belly button and chest are especially memorable. It’s only fitting that these upscale clothing store employees would all wear gloriously creative outfits.

Of course, not everything in Forbidden Fruits is as ripe as the costumes, punchlines, or lead performances. The film’s creative reach sometimes distractingly exceeds its budgetary grasp in the third act. Most notably, there’s an exterior shot of Fig waving goodbye to a just off-screen ambulance that too heavily evokes Joe Lo Truglio reacting to an unseen riverside rescue in Wet Hot American Summer. That same section of the story also struggles with getting its characters right where it wants them to be. Cherry especially seems to just pop in and out whenever the plot needs her to.

Previously, Forbidden Fruits was so much fun because just watching these characters engage in witchy workplace melodrama or sharing ribald barbs drove everything. In contrast, this finale sometimes feels too mechanical in its narrative impulses. Even here, though, great darkly comic lines still keep on coming. Plus, intimate camerawork allows Reinhart to really shine in Apple’s most emotionally raw sequence.

Deviousness seeps into so much of Forbidden Fruits. That element and the nonchalant weirdness (like Fig, Cherry, and Apple taking off their panties while explaining an important witch ritual) materialize with confident aplomb. Vibrant colors and richly detailed performances abound, all rooted in maximalist femme aesthetics punctuated with dark undercurrents. Meanwhile, Alloway’s filmmaking demonstrates dedicated assuredness and unabashed showmanship.

Texas culture is so fascinating (in spite of the state’s lame-brained politicians) because of its contradictions. Dallas locales like the Texas Theatre and The Wild Detectives keep one foot firmly in the honky-tonk past while clearly embracing the present. Well-worn restaurant staples of the state deliver incredibly cutting-edge cuisine. Riotously embodying that legacy is Forbidden Fruits. It’s a fitting achievement for a movie about a “girl power” friend group that’s, paradoxically, just a bunch of social toxicity. Alloway’s feature-length directorial debut also impressively nestles so much humanity into characters who could’ve been forgettable caricatures. Forbidden Fruits slays packing as much fun and quotable lines into its runtime as a Texan’s delivery of “bless your heart” is stuffed with judgment.

Forbidden Fruits is now playing in theaters everywhere.