This Netflix Horror Series Is A Bizarre Trip Through 90s Hollywood

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Adapted by Nick Antosca and Lenore Zion from Todd Grimson’s 1996 novel of the same name, Brand New Cherry Flavor is an eight-episode horror miniseries that arrived in Netflix’s library last August. Rosa Salazar, best known as the wide-eyed title character from Alita: Battle Angel, stars as Lisa Nova, a budding young filmmaker who moves to Los Angeles in the mid-‘90s and contends with predatory producers and paranormal predators. Despite receiving mostly positive reviews from critics (at least according to Rotten Tomatoes, where it has an approval rating of 81% with an average score of 7.1/10), this bizarre mix of horror and Hollywood came and went without sparking much fandom or water-cooler debate. It wasn’t the bomb that Marco Polo was, but it wasn’t the monster hit that Tiger King was, either.

But it’s well worth checking out. There’s no other horror series quite like it. The first episode of Brand New Cherry Flavor starts off as a typical “go to Hollywood and follow your dreams” showbiz fairy tale. An aspiring director heads out to L.A. to meet with a hotshot movie producer who instantly options her short and hires her to adapt it into her debut feature. There are hints of the horrors to come peppered throughout the early scenes. Lisa is followed to L.A. by a mysterious motorcyclist and suffers through a hallucination of a bunch of kittens devouring a coyote carcass that sets up a delightful recurring kitten motif that’s both unsettling and adorable.

This Netflix Horror Adaptation Wastes Perfectly Good Source Material

When Brand New Cherry Flavor really gets going, it feels like a David Lynch movie with the cartoonish visuals and dry, dark humor of Jim Jarmusch’s vision of horror seen in The Dead Don’t Die. With its