Are any kittens actually harmed in the show?

No. While the protagonist repeatedly vomits up live kittens (and has to swallow one whole early on), the kittens themselves aren't butchered or tortured on screen. It's played as a deeply weird, slimy magical delivery system rather than animal cruelty, though watching someone gag up a wet furball is still plenty gross.

How bad is Episode 4 really if I'm watching with an older teen?

It is peak awkward co-watching territory. Episode 4 ("Tadpole Smoothie") features a graphic sex scene where a character reaches inside a glowing magical wound on Lisa's torso. Even if your 17-year-old is totally fine with standard R-rated movies, you probably don't want to be sitting next to each other on the couch during that five-minute stretch.

Does the story actually wrap up, or was it canceled on a cliffhanger?

It wraps up cleanly. Brand New Cherry Flavor was billed and shot as an 8-episode limited series adapting the first part of Todd Grimson's novel, so you get a complete arc without Netflix's usual unresolved cliffhanger problem.

How is the sexual assault / casting couch storyline handled?

In the first episode, a powerful producer pressures Lisa into a sexual encounter to secure her movie deal, and steals her film when she pulls back. It isn't shown with graphic physical violence, but the coercion and abuse of power are realistic and sleazy—and it's the direct catalyst for the entire supernatural revenge plot.

Brand New Cherry Flavor – WISE Score & Parent Review

Name: Screenwise
Author: Screenwise

Where to Watch

Loading streaming options...

Where-to-watch data byJustWatch

Screenwise Verdict

Brand New Cherry Flavor is a gleefully disgusting, stylishly directed fever dream built for adults and older teens who love midnight-movie weirdness. Set in 1990 Los Angeles, it follows Lisa Nova (a fierce Rosa Salazar), an up-and-coming horror director who gets fleeced and coerced by a sleazy studio producer (Eric Lange) and hires a feral bohemian witch (Catherine Keener, having the time of her life) to ruin his life. The price of the curse? Lisa starts vomiting live white kittens on demand.

And honestly, the kitten-vomiting is one of the tamer things that happens across these eight episodes. Created by Nick Antosca and Lenore Zion (adapted from Todd Grimson's cult novel), the show blends Mulholland Drive Hollywood paranoia with Videodrome-level body horror. It drags a bit in the back half once the initial shock value wears off, and it has zero interest in being wholesome or uplifting. Keep it far away from the family living room TV while younger kids are awake, but if you or a 17-year-old film nerd in your house wants something genuinely audacious, it delivers.

Age Fit

Strictly for adults and older teens (17+) with strong stomachs who already love David Lynch, David Cronenberg, or midnight-movie horror. If someone in your house is squeamish about vomit, eyeballs, or weird anatomical stuff, skip it entirely.

WISE Breakdown

Wholesome

15

This is a bleak, nihilistic revenge thriller fueled by curses, exploitation, and petty cruelty in early-90s Hollywood. Nobody here is modeling healthy emotional regulation; every problem is solved via blood magic or betrayal.

Imaginative

88

Wildly original and commit-to-the-bit bizarre. Between the Cronenberg-style body horror, the Lynchian Hollywood fever dream aesthetic, and a literal mechanic where the protagonist vomits live kittens to pay a witch, it is never boring or derivative.

Safe

15

Extreme body horror, graphic gore, explicit sex, drug use, and surreal gross-out imagery (including an infamous sexual encounter involving a side wound). Capped well below 49 because a kid walking into the room during almost any episode is going to see something deeply unsettling.

Enriching

68

Rosa Salazar and Catherine Keener give fantastic, unhinged performances, and the show is a sharp, stylish satire of the pre-MeToo indie film industry's predatory nature. Great craft for horror fans, even if it's mostly an exercise in style and shock.

Parent Info

✓

Why It Might Be Great

Rosa Salazar and Catherine Keener chew the scenery to pieces as an obsessed young director and a deeply weird Malibu witch.
Unapologetically bizarre body horror that commits 100% to its surreal, gross-out premise without winking at the camera.
Early-'90s Los Angeles atmosphere nails the sleazy, neon-soaked indie film boom right down to the vintage streetwear and soundtrack.
A self-contained 8-episode miniseries that tells one complete, unhinged story without dragging it out for a second season.

⚠

What to Watch For

Episode 4 features a sexual scene involving an open ribcage wound that is infamous even among hardcore horror fans—this goes way past standard TV-MA nudity.
Frequent, graphic vomiting of live kittens and other bodily fluids; the kittens aren't harmed on screen, but the gag reflex factor is high.
Predatory Hollywood casting-couch coercion in the premiere sets off the revenge plot, played with uncomfortable realism before the magic kicks in.
Eyeball gore and facial mutilation pop up regularly once the curse starts escalating.

Conversation Starters

"At what point did Lisa's revenge stop being about getting her movie back and just become about winning?"
"If you were making a horror movie, would you go for psychological dread or pure gross-out body horror like this?"
"Does Boro actually help anyone, or does she just feed on ambitious people making bad deals?"

Deep Dive

What kind of horror are we talking about here?

Mainstream Netflix horror usually means ghost stories with emotional monologues (like The Haunting of Hill House) or nostalgic monster hunts. Brand New Cherry Flavor is a completely different beast: it's surrealist body horror.

The scares don't come from jump-scares in dark hallways; they come from watching the human body do things it shouldn't do, paired with the psychological dread of losing control over your own mind. If your older teen is getting into directors like David Cronenberg (The Fly, Crimes of the Future), David Lynch (Mulholland Drive), or recent movies like The Substance, this show sits right in that exact lane.

The Episode 4 litmus test

Common Sense Media pegs this at 16+, which is fair for a teenager who already watches hard-R horror, though 17+ is a safer bet for most families. The reason isn't the standard violence or language—it's the sheer weirdness of the sexual and anatomical imagery.

Without spoiling the plot, Lisa develops a magical, glowing wound on her side mid-season. In Episode 4 ("Tadpole Smoothie"), a love scene turns into something straight out of an art-house shock film involving that wound. It's the exact moment most casual viewers tap out, and it's definitely not the episode you want to accidentally co-watch with your high schooler without knowing it's coming.

Why horror fans still talk about it

What keeps the show from feeling like cheap shock-slop is the craft. The production design captures the grimy, pre-cell-phone 1990s Hollywood strip—payphones, boxy sedans, desperate people pitching scripts in diners—and contrasts it with lush, terrifyingly weird jungle hallucinations.

Rosa Salazar plays Lisa not as a helpless victim, but as someone so ambitious and furious that she's willing to burn down everyone around her to get her film print back. And Catherine Keener's Boro—wearing mismatched thrift-store clothes, smoking constantly, and tending to zombies in her plant-filled bungalow—is one of the most memorable TV villains of the decade.