Revenge is a dangerous road to travel.
Set in 1990s Los Angeles, Lisa Nova comes to town with her short film under her belt looking to make it big as a movie director. She meets movie producer Lou Burke who thinks her short is something special. The quality of her short film shows that she has a lot of talent and he makes a deal with her to start her Hollywood career. Not long after the ink is dry on the contract, Lou steals her project to turn her short into a feature-length film. A furious Lisa then runs into one more terrible person called Boro. Boro sees this young, strong, angry woman as a tool, not a person. She offers Lisa revenge and Lisa is eager for her help.
Brand New Cherry Flavor is nuts. That’s the easiest way to explain the whole show. By the end of the first episode, you know this is a revenge tale. What you don’t know is how far down the mouth of madness you’ll see Boro take Lisa. Boro is a witch, and what Lisa doesn’t recognize until it’s too late is that Boro also has an agenda. She isn’t being helped. she’s being exploited. And that’s after Lisa is exploited by a scum bag movie producer, so Lisa’s anger blinds her. Any rational thought is thrown out the window until it’s too late to stop (spells have very strict rules). Even faced with doing things that are far from normal, Lisa continues down the rabbit hole Boro opened. The first side effect of Boro’s spell is an alarming one that no one could ever see coming: vomiting kittens. By that I mean Lisa gives birth to kittens by painfully throwing up. Kittens that Boro then comes to collect for…her own use. If there is an upside, it’s only one cat at a time.
Regurgitating kittens isn’t the craziest thing that happens either. Spirits/demons, assassins, zombies, body horror, and assorted scorned people also come into play.
The intriguing thing about New Cherry is that everyone gets their own backstory that makes you reconsider how you view them. Lisa isn’t as innocent as she looks. She’s got her own out-of-bounds reason that she shows up in LA on her own. Lou is set in his ways, doing anything he wants to leverage his place in the industry. It’s brought him great success, so why would he stop? Roy is a huge movie star that’s trying to stay a huge movie star. Behind the scenes, he’s a mess, but his Hollywood image portrays a man who has everything going for him…and there is something about Lisa that draws him back to her one crazy event after another. I guess helping to dispose of a body is a great relationship builder.
Take these people (and a few more, I’m leaving quite a few out), introduce a witch who is a master at pulling strings, and watch as their lives turn into a complete nightmare. Revenge rarely goes well and the force of destruction often ends up much larger than ever thought possible.
In terms of overall storytelling, New Cherry hits all the staples of the genre. What it lacks in originality, it picks up in wild scenarios that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Half the time you’ll wonder what’s going to happen next, if anything could be more shocking than what you just saw, and if anyone is going to survive. New Cherry isn’t for everyone, it’s very adult and frequently gruesome, the special effects are really well done–they look real. If you can handle the insanity, you’re in for a wild ride.