Noah (Daisy Edgar-Jones) doesn’t have much luck on dating sites. She’s 22. Her last dinner date, with some obnoxious guy named Chad, was so bad that she’s convinced she’ll stay single forever. Suddenly, things start to shift. She meets a handsome stranger at her local supermarket. Steve (Sebastian Stan) is not just good-looking. He is charming, highly successful, and incredibly wealthy. Noah is so swept off her feet that she ignores all the red flags raised by lesbian best friend Millie (JoJo T. Gibbs). Noah and her new beau drink and dance. They spend the night together. Everything is going a bit too smoothly. The viewer might be led to believe that there’s trouble ahead. That’s when, a good thirty minutes into the movie, the opening credits roll in and the ‘real’ story begins.

Fresh could be described as a dark romantic comedy that meets a socially conscious horror flick. Mimi Cave’s feature-length directorial debut looks at the problems women face in the dating world. During the Sundance press conference, screenwriter Lauryn Kahn says that she had a lot of fun tackling different genres and putting them into one screenplay: “I wanted to somehow make a scary movie and, also, say something. Not shoving it down your throat, unnecessarily – no pun intended. Not in a preachy way. I wanted you to be genuinely scared and then, also, maybe, laugh where you shouldn’t or just feel a plethora of emotions.”

This constant surprise effect in the script is what made leading actress Daisy Edgar-Jones say yes to the offer: “There are no rules to it. You’ll be in this really awful sort of scene where Noah is traumatized after finding out she’s locked in this sort of lair and then, you hear this 80s soundtrack playing while Steve’s upstairs having the time of his life.” The Golden Globe-nominated actress explained, during her Sundance Q&A, one of the reasons she appreciates the rosy prologue in the movie. “That first flush of romance is really full of fun and joy. It was great to take that to the next post-credits moment, where Noah is in a dark place.”

To get into the headspace of the character, Sebastian Stan tried to watch as many documentaries about psychopaths as he could find. He even managed to contact Dr. Dorothy Lewis, the renowned psychiatrist who spent decades analyzing some of the most notorious serial murderers. “She interviewed Ted Bundy, out of all people,” Stan marvels. “The production arranged for me to have this one-on-one with her. I sent her the script. She helped me kind of create this back story for Steve. A lot of that came from her work and working with her.”

Although Fresh unfolds like a romantic comedy at first, scenes become more gruesome and unsettling as we go. Jojo T. Gibbs says the final sequence, where all the female characters join forces, was the most fun to shoot. It required skilled stunt work: “It was like my childhood dreams coming true. I get to play fight. Sebastian was awesome. He was really dope.” Her costar Edgar-Jones wholeheartedly agrees: “It was one of my favorite days of filming, actually. We did stunt rehearsals. It was great because Sebastian’s had lots of experience with stunts. It was brilliant to play, working out how each of us sort of comes at him. None of these girls have ever fought before. You wouldn’t know what to do. It was quite exhausting, but it was really fun to do.”

At the festival, Fresh premiered in the Midnight section. It will be available on Hulu starting March 4.