Anyone who’s had any experience in the world of online dating knows that modern romance can be an absolute horror story. From dates who refuse to ask you a single question to those who bombard you with back-handed compliments, dating can be a truly painful experience – so much so that it’s tempting to give up on the whole institution entirely.

What is refreshing, however, is when you meet a potential love interest in real life. At the grocery store, for example, as the story goes in Fresh, an upcoming thriller that debuted at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival last month.

Starring Normal People’s Daisy Edgar-Jones and Pam & Tommy’s Sebastian Stan, the buzzy new movie follows the story of a woman named Noa (Edgar-Jones) who endures a string of terrible dates before bumping into a handsome and seemingly well-adjusted man Steve (Stan) while shopping down the supermarket aisle. Cute, eh?

Not quite. Firstly, there’s the lack of social media profiles, which Noa’s best friend, played by Jojo T. Gibbs, immediately finds suspicious.

When Noa decides to go on an impromptu weekend getaway after their first date, things quickly go south when Steve reveals some unusual predilections. Is this man a psycho? A fetishist? Who knows.

In the creepy trailer, we see things turn sour as Noa discovers that her romantic getaway might well be another modern horror story – only this time around, with a genuine reason to be afraid for her life.

“What’s going on?” Noa asks Steve, to which he replies with an ominous smile, “I’m going to tell you but you’re gonna freak out.”

As the room starts to spin, we hear Noa say in a terrified voice, “No, this isn’t happening,” while Steve echoes creepily, “Yeah, it’s happening. No games, that’s what you wanted.”

“It’s about giving,” Steve continues. “Giving yourself over to somebody.”

There are plenty of conclusions to be drawn from the trailer, and none of them are reassuring. In a poster shared on Twitter by Searchlight Pictures, a severed human hand packaged in the style of grocery store meat gives a sinister insight into Steve’s possible appetites. Safe to say, cannibalism definitely isn’t what most people aspire to when heading down the romcom road. 

At a panel discussion during Sundance last month, director Mimi Cave explained what sets Stan’s character apart from other movie villains.

“Sebastian came in with a level of commitment that was beyond and he put it on himself to learn about someone who had trauma in their past who would be living in the life of his character,” she told ET Canada. 

“There were little things that we wanted to do to set Steve apart from other villains you may have seen in the past.”

When asked whether the cast was able to look at meat the same way after making the movie, Edgar-Jones also had an intriguing response: “I could not eat patè after filming.”

In any case, we don’t have long to wait until we find out exactly what Steve has in store for Noa, as Fresh premieres on Disney+ in the UK and on Hulu in the US on 4 March. 

Images: Hulu