Warning: This article contains spoilers for Fresh.
Mimi Cave's horror tropes (the final girl, for example,) and instead celebrates and uplifts female allyship and friendship. However, this means that one death in Fresh was actually the worst.
Noa and Mollie's friendship in particular is the core of the film in many ways. Mollie's undeterred investigation into Noa's whereabouts reaches its endgame when she snoops too deeply and winds up also being captured by Steve, with the surprising help of his wife. Whilst there are some excellent examples of women ing women in Fresh, one death, in particular, confuses this sentiment.
Whilst Steve does get his comeuppance, rightfully so, it is his wife that could be considered the film's worst casualty due to Ann's dark backstory. The first glimpse into their marriage is an interesting one, as they stand together awkwardly in the bathroom doing their retrospective night-time routines. Ann looks physically uncomfortable as Steve tells her, ''good teamwork today,'' and her body is half-turned away from him. When she undresses to get in the shower, the camera pans down to show that she has a prosthetic leg, which seems to be a big hint that she is one of Steve's past victims. The downturn of her character arc, when she is killed for trying to strangle Noa, in light of all this, does a disservice to her own trauma.
In Fresh, Ann was symbolic of the women who are complicit in the abuse of other women through her knowledge of Fresh's ending, and has probably lived in fear of him for years, mixed with likely suffering from Stockholm syndrome.
Even when Ann discovers Steve's corpse, she responds with ''Hm,'' and nothing more. It isn't wild to speculate that his death was a relief to her, which makes her turn on Noa even more confusing. She doesn't really have a motive to strangle her; it can't really be jealousy if Ann doesn't even care when he dies. Thus, her villain arc in Fresh comes across as an excuse to have another heart-stopping horror moment just for the sake of it. Whilst Ann certainly should be held able as her victimhood doesn't negate her complicity, her dying as a villain makes her horrifying experience with the cannibalistic Steve almost meaningless.
