2026’s Newest Horror Movie Is Secretly A Culture-Defining 2004 Comedy In Disguise

It is hard to live up to an icon. No matter how nostalgic a person is for their favorite album or TV show, it isn’t often a successor manages to hit the mark when compared to its predecessor. You can count the number of movies that have threaded this needle, but now another contender is joining the list. The smartest horror movie of 2026 is earning rave reviews, and audiences now admit Forbidden Fruits is the perfect follow-up to everyone’s favorite ’00s movie.

Released on March 27, Forbidden Fruits is hot off its SXSW debut, and it takes no prisoners. Bold and unapologetic, the horror comedy is the best kind of movie to watch with friends. Forbidden Fruits asks what happens when Sabrina the Teenage Witch joins a bloody girl gang, and how does that go? It makes the new release the perfect successor to Mean Girls.

Pretty fetch, huh?

2026’s Forbidden Fruits Is Effectively A Horror Movie Version Of Means Girls

Starring Lili Reinhart and Lola Tung, Forbidden Fruits is a fever dream of a film. The coming-of-age tale begins easily enough as fans meet Apple, a high school student who heads up a femme cult of witches. The group, consisting of members Cherry and Fig, meet in the basement of their local mall after their shifts at Free Eden. However, the cult’s close sisterhood is challenged when a new employee named Pumpkin comes into frame. The new girl questions the girl gang’s performative (and often hypocritical) actions, pitting the girls at odds with one another and themselves.

Forbidden Fruits gives an unflinching view of high school social drama, exploring every hierarchy and peeling back the lip-gloss veneer to find a slew of ugly truths. Reinhart’s role as Apple is paradoxical as the actress is both shiny and sinister. Fig and Cherry explore familiar high school tropes as the pair deal with everything from people pleasing to bullying and boys. Separately, the girls are a mess, but they draw strength in numbers when they lean into their cult ties. So, of course, the threat of an outsider like Pumpkin leaves the group on edge and at each other’s throats.

If this story breakdown sounds familiar to you at all, it is thanks to Mean Girls. The ’04 teen comedy defined a generation with its over-the-top drama and secret insight. Written by Tina Fey, Mean Girls is the ultimate dissection of high school cliques as the movie unpacks the highs (and lows) of social status. When Cady Heron makes her debut at North Shore High School, her life is thrown upside down as she learns about the Plastics, a tight-knit group of popular girls led by Regina George. The movie follows Cady as she sees the impact of peer pressure firsthand, and her complicated relationship with the school’s “cool girls” goes off the rails fast.

Why Forbidden Fruits’ Mean Girls Parallels Make It Work

Looking at Forbidden Fruits and Mean Girls, the parallels write themselves. Apple and Regina are clear twins while Gretchen Wieners and Karen Smith have doubles in Cherry and Fig. Cady and Pumpkin are clear soul sisters. And in this new movie, we trade in a boring high school for a liminal shopping mall with a seriously creepy basement. Mean Girls may not have the horror overtones that Forbidden Fruits relies on, but the crux of the new movie is a clear love letter to Fey’s most enduring project.

It has been 22 years since Mean Girls made its debut, and its iconic status is more clear than ever. The generation that grew up with the teen comedy is now coming into its own, and that growth sparked the creation of Forbidden Fruits. The 2026 horror comedy is only able to play with toxic femininity, misogyny, and performative feminism because Mean Girls did it first. The groundwork laid by Fey in ’04 is now a framework free for other creators to explore. And if that isn’t fetch, then nothing is.