‘Fresh’ and how the character of Paul, the waiter, successfully subverts the expectations of horror

Horror movie fans the world over get tired of rolling their eyes at another braless girl running upstairs where there is no second exit route, and the absence of that cliché is just one of the things. which makes Mimi Cave’s ‘Fresh’ so, well, refreshing.

It’s not the fault of the victims in these movies: no one deserves to have their ass (or any part of it) surgically removed and sold for profit against their wishes. And yet, for those of us who love a good thriller, we can’t help but wince when a character makes a clearly prey-like decision, as we’ve seen hundreds of times before.

We think it’s too trusting too soon; she doesn’t want to be rude; she doesn’t listen to her intuition despite several different warning signs…and the list goes on. The experience of watching characters helplessly run into danger is emotionally draining and, frankly, overdone.

But not in ‘Fresh’. In ‘Fresh’ nobody does anything particularly stupid; sure, they make missteps, but nothing beyond basic human error. However, one character stands out as the one on the “how to behave in a horror movie” poster, and that character is Paul (Dayo Okeniyi).

Basically, he does everything right and does his best to help without putting himself at risk or, as we see too often with traditionally male characters, trying to be a hero for the sake of being a hero. Paul is just a good guy in the right place at the right time. He does not look for trouble, but the situation happens to him. He’s literally doing his job when Noa (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and his date Steve (Sebastian Stan) show up at his bar.

Noa casually mentions Paul, a mutual acquaintance, with her best friend Mollie (Jonica T Gibbs) when she recaps their date, and Mollie briefly reflects on her brief relationship with him, saying, “Paul? Oh Paul! I remember why we broke up. He was a good guy.”

You’re right: he’s a good guy, and his behavior should be imitated by every self-respecting person in the horror movies that is life today. When Noa goes missing, Mollie asks Paul for help. This is when he begins to shine and when ‘Fresh’ subverts the horror movie template.

It comes to an end when Paul demonstrates the most important survival tactic: listen to your intuition.

Paul tries to help Mollie by following the map on her screenshot to find her, but, when he stops at the strange secluded bunker house, his warning signs come on and he says (correctly) that “this shit is creepy.”

He takes a second to see if he can locate Mollie without going into the house, but when he hears a gunshot, he follows his own intuition. He backs the car up and drives away, which is exactly the right decision because he would otherwise have been killed by Ann (Charlotte Le Bon), the wife with Stockholm Syndrome.

Paul even says out loud, “Come on, man, I’ve already seen this movie. That chick isn’t alive, you know that.” But Paul’s refreshingly original actions during the finale aren’t the only ones, as he is shown throughout ‘Fresh’ avoiding all the frustrating traps he could have fallen into.

Like any good bartender, Paul remembers his customers, especially women who appear to be on a first date. Paul remembers Noa, but when Mollie shows up and flirts with him in an attempt to get the details from Steve, he doesn’t immediately give them to her.

He wants to help, but Paul doesn’t give in to the trap she’s trying to set for him. Instead, she redirects the conversation by suggesting that he go to the police, which, again, would be a sensible and logical thing to do for a person.

Of course, it doesn’t turn out that way, since it wouldn’t be a great movie. Paul tries to help her find her missing friend just by doing a small favor that requires almost no effort on her part.

This unknowingly puts Mollie in danger, but Paul reacts to Mollie’s disappearance in another sensible way (honestly, does he know he’s in a horror movie?). Before any suspicion of a potentially criminal situation, the characters must have good sense (not common sense, because it is not, in fact, that common). Paul is sensible, like a citizen detective, when he takes screenshots of Mollie’s location, which she previously shared with him “just in case things go wrong.”

Any slightly tech-savvy user knows that when your phone loses service or goes off, location services no longer work. Take this precaution knowing Noa’s disappearance and the result is crucial almost immediately. He tries to call Mollie when she’s closing up the bar and when she doesn’t answer he tries to find her location only to see “LOCATION NOT AVAILABLE” which leads him to the potentially heroic quest escapade we mentioned earlier.

Paul may not be the traditionally defined “hero” of this story, since he didn’t rescue the maidens, but since he knows how to behave in a horror movie, he manages to make it out alive, and he’s a hero to us as a result.

‘Fresh’ is available on Disney + Spain.