Brand New Cherry Flavor

It's as ambitious as anything Netflix has produced this year. Held together by an incredible performance by Rosa Salazar, it’s not a show in which everything "works," but it’s also quickly easy to forgive its missteps because it’s clearly the product of a showrunner willing to take risks. ... Recalling everything from “Wild Palms” to “Lost Highway,” “Brand New Cherry Flavor” will be far too strange for a lot of Netflix subscribers—this is a good thing.

The tone here is David Lynch meets David Cronenberg meets Quentin Tarantino, moody and heightened in the early episodes, then ever more weird and gory. It all hinges on Salazar and treatises may be written on her huge, expressive eyes, which jump between angered, exhausted, erotic and (repeatedly) horrified.

Yep, this show is bonkers. But Salazar sets a down-to-Earth tone that gives it ballast. “Cherry’s” noir-tinged presentation of Southern California in the ’90s feels authentic in its nihilism, too.

In another show, Lisa might have been the naïve victim in a cautionary tale about what can happen in the pursuit of power. Instead, as the series brings her own transgressions into focus, she remains bracingly imperfect, an anchor for the deep and hopeless pessimism that Brand New Cherry Flavor clearly and forcefully articulate.

For those who don’t mind the loopy, meandering not-quite-real-ness of it all, Cherry Flavor makes for an engagingly offbeat affair. And no, that title is never once explained nor justified.

Most of its imagery recalls better projects like Mulholland Drive or eXistenZ, but Antosca and Zion’s commitment to telling a deeply unsettling occult story is, for lack of a better word, bewitching.

[Rosa Salazar] isn’t the only reason to watch Brand New Cherry Flavor, but she’s surely the best reason to keep watching a show that, stretched far beyond the capacity of the material at eight hours, will probably be too disturbing for those who like their entertainment vanilla and too vanilla for those who like their entertainment truly and consistently disturbing.

The flavor certainly has bite, and for some, that’ll be enough. But as the macabre and just plain odd moments pile up, it’s pretty clear that this is one of those made-to-binge brews that’s the streaming-TV equivalent of empty calories.

[Rosa Salazar] imbues every [scene] with vivid emotion that almost — almost — grounds the show’s self-consciously weird reality. Any time “Brand New Cherry Flavor” gets specific about Lisa’s pain, it comes close to working. Too often, it loses her personality and motivation to Boro’s jungle, Lou’s ego, or the omnipresent viscera of her own blood and guts betraying her along the way.

Despite its game cast, some unique imagery, and plenty of gore, we’ve seen this story before and done better.

Brand New Cherry Flavor has its high points, but its story isn’t unique enough and its weirdness seems like the free-floating kind that makes most viewers scratch their heads at what they’re seeing.