Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Fresh Kills’ on Hulu, Jennifer Esposito’s Powerful Drama About the Mothers and Daughters of Mob Families

Fresh Kills (now streaming on Hulu) is notable for being the directorial debut of veteran actress Jennifer Esposito, who also writes, produces and co-stars. Set in her native Staten Island, the film taps into what Diane Keaton’s character in The Godfather might’ve been feeling and going through, married to a notorious gangster and being kept in the dark about what’s really going on. Esposito plays the wife of a mob boss, although the actors playing her daughters take the lead: Odessa A’zion (the Hellraiser remake; she’s also Pamela Adlon’s daughter) as the brash older sister and Emily Bader (Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin and Amazon series My Lady Jane) as the younger one who’s so withdrawn, she barely ever talks – and the phrase “doesn’t talk” takes on a double meaning in a movie about gangsters.

FRESH KILLS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Rose Larusso (Bader) sits behind the wheel of a car. There’s blood on her face and hands. There’s a pistol and cash on the passenger seat, and a crucifix hanging from the mirror. We’ll return to this moment in the third act, and now, we jump back 10 years to Staten Island, 1987. Rose (Anastasia Veronica Lee) and her older sister Connie (Taylor Madeline Hand) are about 10-ish years old. Their family has relocated from Brooklyn to a big house on Staten Island, the type with pillars out front. They’re just moving in; boxes litter the house. Nobody wanted to leave Brooklyn, it seems, but their father told them they’ll have “a better life” here. There’s vague talk about their family being the subject of judgy gossip, which may be the product of their father’s line of work. It doesn’t take Hercule Poirot to piece together the truth: Their dad Joe (Domenick Lombardozzi) orders around tough-looking guys, shuffles around boxes containing who-knows-what (one seems to be leaking powder) and carries a pistol in his waistband – and I haven’t even mentioned his head-to-toe velvet tracksuit. It’s pretty obvious he’s in “the sanitation business.” 

I kid, but they also live near a landmark – the dump. It’s the Fresh Kills Landfill, and the smell drifts into the neighborhood like an invisible symbol of death, rot and decay. Connie is loud and confident, and Rose barely ever says a word, and that’s why their mother Francine (Esposito) babies her youngest a bit, allowing her to skip her first day in a new school, because she’s so shy and tentative. Francine is very close with her sister Christine (Annabella Sciorra), who calls one day and says her husband never came home last night. Well, he works for Joe. And now we cut to the poor guy’s funeral, Joe comforting the newly orphaned Alli (Nicholas Cirillo) in the front pew. What Joe tells his daughters he does for a living is never made clear. Connie is more worldly and seems to have it figured out, and Rose is naive, typically following her sister’s lead. They’re very close. When something goes down – it’s never made clear, as the movie takes Rose’s point-of-view – and Joe and Francine get into an argument, the girls make a blanket fort in the bedroom, but it isn’t thick enough to blot out the angry voices.

Now we jump to 1993. Connie (A’zion) and Rose (Bader) are teenagers; the former has gotten even more brassy, and even troublingly violent at times, while Rose often sits quietly, feeling isolated from the rest of her family, unable to articulate it. When she says in passing that she may not want to have kids when she gets older, Francine just about flips her lid, calling such a notion “awful.” Rose’s schoolmates know exactly why she and Connie don’t ever get in trouble with the nuns for wearing short skirts – nobody dares poke the bear. Now it’s 1997, and Connie has a young daughter, and the father is, I believe, in prison. Connie’s still a wild child, and when she stays out all night, Rose looks after the kid, pretty much loving her as if she were her own. Rose is being shoved into an unwanted engagement with the guy next door, and Joe gives Rose and Connie a bakery to operate, although you know and I know and Connie knows and Rose knows it’s most likely a laundromat for money, since their cousin Alli has an office in the basement. Everything’s adding up for Rose now, and piling up inside her. She’s starting to have anxiety attacks. All those years of not talking are taking their toll.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Nobody’s ever made a Goodfellas from the perspective of the women, until now. Or The Sopranos, which is a more prevalent predecessor for Esposito’s story.

Performance Worth Watching: Bader and A’zion have terrific chemistry, playing essentially two sides of the same coin; the former carries majority of the emotional, dramatic weight and the latter gives the movie color – and a bit of entertainment value – with a performance that stops just shy of over-the-top, remaining authentic and believable throughout.

Memorable Dialogue: Rose asks a question even though she surely already knows the answer: “Con, is Dad an honest man?”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Fresh Kills shouldn’t be overlooked – don’t be fooled by the title, which implies that it’s a horror movie about a slasher who stores bodies in the vegetable cisper. In truth, it’s an excellent behind-the-camera debut for Esposito, who nurtures strong, empathetic performances from the entire cast, and maintains a consistent medium-to-heavy tone that occasionally veers into highly effective melodrama. She pilots the narrative to a potent and realistic climax with some powerhouse acting from Bader and Sopranos vet Scorria, whose perfectly modulated monologue is low-key one of the best, most earnest bits of acting I’ve seen in recent memory.

Although the film doesn’t offer much dynamic visual gusto – it’s frankly ideal for intimate home viewing – the screenplay is sharply crafted, with strong, never showy dialogue and a keen sense of character, Esposito giving Bader, A’zion and herself well-considered characters to work with. The structural time-hops smartly illustrate past, present and an uncertain future for Esposito’s characters, and the depiction of three generations of females in a toxically male-dominated lifestyle is poignant without kowtowing to more obvious new-feminist overtures.

The dynamic between mother and daughters is fascinating and combustible: Francine is continually challenged to look the other way and put family ahead of big-picture morality, with Connie buying into poisonous loyalty and Rose, tortured by the need to speak her mind and escape this psychological prison, eventually reaches a point where she refuses to be gaslit. Even in moments of great tension among these women, one senses deeper love and understanding beneath the volatility. The truth is the elephant in the room, crowding them out, and Fresh Kills is about the one woman willing to acknowledge and challenge generational trauma.

Our Call: Fresh Kills is an excellent, thoughtful and, yes, fresh drama. It shouldn’t be flying so far under the radar. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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