Netflix’s Disturbing 8-Part Revenge Thriller Is A Wild One-Night Binge — And Its Body-Horror Nightmare Only Gets Stranger With Every Episode

Netflix has no shortage of revenge thrillers, but few descend into territory quite as strange, gruesome and unpredictable as Brand New Cherry Flavor.

Created by Nick Antosca and Lenore Zion and released in 2021, the eight-part limited series begins with a painfully recognizable Hollywood story: an ambitious young filmmaker is exploited by a powerful producer after refusing his sexual advances.

Then she meets a witch.

From there, a relatively grounded tale of Hollywood abuse mutates into a surreal body-horror nightmare involving curses, revenge, disturbing rituals and — most memorably — kittens emerging from places they absolutely should not.

With only eight episodes, it can be devoured quickly. Getting some of its images out of your head afterward may take considerably longer.

A Hollywood Dream Turns Into A Nightmare

Set in 1990s Los Angeles, Brand New Cherry Flavor follows Lisa, a young filmmaker attempting to break into the movie business.

Her career initially appears to be heading exactly where she wants it to go.

A successful producer is impressed by her work and offers her the opportunity she has been chasing: the chance to direct a movie.

But the situation changes when he makes sexual advances toward her.

Lisa refuses him.

Instead of simply accepting that rejection, the producer turns against her. She loses the opportunity and discovers that her work has been taken from her as well.

Furious and with few conventional options capable of delivering the justice she wants, Lisa chooses a much darker solution.

She makes a deal with a witch.

Revenge Comes With A Horrifying Price

The arrangement sounds deceptively straightforward.

The witch can place a curse on the producer and destroy the life of the man who exploited Lisa.

But supernatural revenge is not free.

Lisa has to pay.

And Brand New Cherry Flavor wastes little time revealing just how bizarre that payment will become.

Lisa begins producing kittens.

Not metaphorically.

The series commits fully to its body-horror premise, including an unforgettable early sequence in which Lisa feels something lodged in her throat before coughing up a living kitten.

It is only the beginning.

The further Lisa travels into the supernatural world she has entered, the more grotesque and psychologically disturbing the consequences become.

The Body Horror Keeps Getting Worse

Anyone expecting a conventional revenge thriller should reconsider before pressing play.

The series repeatedly uses physical horror to make Lisa’s increasingly dangerous bargain impossible to ignore.

The kitten births are disturbing enough.

Then there is the witch’s relationship with those kittens.

And later comes a body-piercing ritual that pushes the series even further into visceral territory.

These scenes are not simply included for shock value, however.

Beneath the grotesque imagery is a story about power, exploitation, ambition and the price of attempting to reclaim control after someone else has taken it away.

Lisa wants justice.

But the supernatural alternative she chooses has its own rules, demands and forms of exploitation.

Escaping one person who wants something from her does not necessarily mean she is free.

Hollywood Is Almost As Frightening As The Supernatural

That is where Brand New Cherry Flavor becomes more interesting than its outrageous premise might initially suggest.

The supernatural elements are extreme, but the world surrounding them is built around recognizable Hollywood anxieties.

Ambition can be weaponized.

Promises can disappear.

Powerful people can exploit those trying to enter the industry.

Careers can be controlled by individuals who expect something in return.

Lisa’s experiences allow the series to explore ideas surrounding sexual exploitation and the difficulty victims can face when seeking justice.

Instead of approaching those issues through a conventional legal drama, however, Brand New Cherry Flavor transforms them into a psychedelic supernatural revenge story.

The result is deliberately uncomfortable.

The people may be dangerous, but so are the forces Lisa unleashes to fight them.

Rosa Salazar Throws Herself Into Lisa’s Transformation

At the center of the chaos is Rosa Salazar as Lisa.

Her character enters the story as an ambitious filmmaker determined to establish herself in Los Angeles.

By the time the supernatural consequences of her revenge begin taking hold, that original dream has become entangled with anger, obsession and survival.

Lisa’s transformation from victim to avenger was crucial to Antosca’s conception of the series.

Rather than building an open-ended television show designed to continue indefinitely, the story was constructed around that contained journey.

That helps explain why Brand New Cherry Flavor moves with such intensity.

It does not have to spend seasons slowly approaching its central conflict.

Lisa is wronged.

She demands revenge.

Then she discovers exactly how expensive revenge can become.

Why There Was Never A Season 2

For viewers who reach the end wanting more, there is an intriguing detail.

The lack of a second season was not simply another case of Netflix abruptly cancelling a series.

Antosca conceived Brand New Cherry Flavor as a limited series from the beginning, with Lisa’s Hollywood revenge arc designed as a contained story.

That decision is particularly interesting because the television adaptation does not exhaust its source material.

The series is based on Todd Grimson’s 1996 novel, and the eight episodes reportedly cover only around a third of the book.

The original story continues considerably further.

Lisa eventually travels to Brazil before later returning to Los Angeles, leaving material that theoretically could have supported additional seasons.

Antosca nevertheless chose the shorter route.

There Was Enough Material For Much More

Had the adaptation continued following Grimson’s novel, there could potentially have been enough story for at least another couple of seasons.

But that would also have fundamentally changed what Brand New Cherry Flavor is as a television experience.

Its eight-episode length makes it feel less like an ongoing series and more like one prolonged descent into madness.

The nightmare begins, intensifies and reaches its destination without requiring viewers to commit to several seasons.

That approach also fits Antosca’s career.

Rather than remaining attached to one long-running project, he has repeatedly moved between different television productions, including numerous limited series.

His current work includes developing Cape Fear, another television project based on John D. MacDonald’s novel The Executioners, previously adapted for the screen — most famously in Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed 1991 psychological thriller.

Eight Episodes Of Increasingly Bizarre Horror

There are plenty of Netflix shows that can be described as easy weekend binges.

Brand New Cherry Flavor technically belongs in that category.

Emotionally, however, “easy” is probably the wrong word.

Its eight episodes combine Hollywood satire, supernatural revenge, psychological horror and graphic body horror into a story that becomes increasingly difficult to predict.

One moment it resembles an industry drama about a young filmmaker confronting an abusive power structure.

The next, somebody is producing kittens from their body.

That refusal to remain inside one familiar genre is a major part of the show’s appeal.

A Netflix Horror Series That Is Difficult To Forget

Years after its 2021 release, Brand New Cherry Flavor remains an unusually strange entry in Netflix’s horror catalogue.

The series tackles exploitation, ambition and revenge without turning any of them into a straightforward morality tale.

Lisa’s anger is understandable.

Her solution is anything but ordinary.

And the deeper she moves into her bargain, the clearer it becomes that getting revenge and regaining control are not necessarily the same thing.

There may only be eight episodes, and there may never be another season.

But for viewers who want a revenge thriller capable of becoming something far darker and stranger than its opening suggests, Brand New Cherry Flavor packs an extraordinary amount of nightmare fuel into a very short binge.

Just don’t start it expecting a normal Hollywood revenge story.

Brand New Cherry Flavor is streaming on Netflix.