Review: Bloody 'Brand New Cherry Flavor' exults in the weird
New Netflix series is anything but typical.
It’s an old story. A talented newcomer arrives in Hollywood with her first film in hand. She is wooed by a bigtime Hollywood producer and signs an agreement. The bigtime producer steals her movie. She vows revenge.
Then she begins coughing up kittens.
At the very least “Brand New Cherry Flavor” is inventive. Kitten coughing is not a show biz staple. This splatter-filled eight-part Netflix adaptation of a novel by Todd Grimson also has one of the more bizarre sex scenes in memory, hamster stew, a tattoo artist witch, spontaneous combustion, countless murders, cannibalism and eyeballs galore.
It also has zombies, but everything has zombies. To its eternal credit there are no vampires.
The budding filmmaker is Lisa Nova (Rosa Salazar), with a short film sporting a mind-blowing ending. The weasley producer is Lou Burke (Eric Lange). He tells Lisa she can definitely direct an expanded version of her film and it’s sure to be a blockbuster. She signs on the dotted line. Oops.
Then Lisa meets a strange woman named Boro (Catherine Keener, in all sorts of odd makeup) who says she can help ruin Burke’s life. Lisa just has to do a few favors for her.
Uh-oh. Cue the kitten coughing.
Along the way Lisa hooks up with a movie star (Jeff Ward), relies on an old friend (Manny Jacinto), meets Burke’s wayward son (Daniel Doheny) and reunites with the star of her film (Siena Werber). Bad times are had by all.
The tone here is David Lynch meets David Cronenberg meets Quentin Tarantino, moody and heightened in the early episodes, then ever more weird and gory. It all hinges on Salazar and treatises may be written on her huge, expressive eyes, which jump between angered, exhausted, erotic and (repeatedly) horrified.
By the end, she’s seen it all.
Tom Long is a longtime contributor to The Detroit News.
'Brand New Cherry Flavor'
GRADE: B
For mature audiences: Gore, nudity, sexual situations, language
Netflix