This review was first published in collaboration with The menupremiering at Fantastic Fest 2022. It has been updated and reposted for the theatrical release of the film.

One of 2021’s most talked about movie scenes reads like an unplanned prequel to Mark Mylod’s dark and gory comedy thriller The menu. At Michael Sarnoski’s Pig, reclusive, backcountry chef Rob gently eviscerates the chef of a posh haute cuisine restaurant, who also happens to be one of Rob’s former employees. According to Rob, the other chef betrayed himself when he gave up his dream of owning an intimate, cozy pub, in favor of serving painstakingly deconstructed food to snobs who mostly care about price. “Every day you wake up and there will be fewer of you,” Rob tells the chef, who looks devastated – but not like he disagrees. “You live your life for them, and they don’t even see you. You don’t even see yourself.

The menu looks like the next step in this story, if the hapless high-end chef had decided to turn Rob’s revelation outward against his clientele rather than inward. The menu pokes fun at the kind of people who would eat at this restaurant Chef Rob despises, with its “emulsified scallops” and “stuffed blueberry mousse, bathed in the smoke of Douglas fir cones”. But there is also a bit of humanity in them. One of the most intriguing things about the movie is how the filmmakers find room to skewer every target in sight.

Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Margot, a last-minute date for wealthy foodie Tyler (Nicholas Hoult), who has secured a spot at an exclusive restaurant on a private island run by celebrity chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes ). Margot doesn’t care what kind of food Chef Slowik serves, like a few cleverly spaced dabs of sauce on a plate, presented as a cheeky “breadless bread dish.” But Tyler is obsessed with Chief Slowik’s work and the possibility of gaining his attention and interest. They’ve been an odd couple from the start, with a strange tension between them that suggests secrets waiting to be revealed.

Image: Photos of the projectors

They are not the only ones with secrets. The other guests on this particular evening include a smug food critic (Janet McTeer) and her sycophant editor (Paul Adelstein), an underage movie star (John Leguizamo) and her assistant (Aimee Carrero), a trio of rowdy tech louts who kick off the evening bragging about having spent their dinner fraudulently, and an older couple who think they can recognize Margot. Then there’s Chef Slowik, who has planned a dangerous “menu” for the evening, designed to reveal the secrets.

How far Chief Slowik is willing to go, and what happens with Margot, are most of the complications in The menu. Otherwise, it might just play out as a fairly dark and familiar revenge thriller aimed at easy targets: wealthy, empowered, crass, self-satisfied people. If there weren’t more things under the surface, The menu would risk coming across as a fanciful version of one of those teenage slashers that is more about watching symbolically obnoxious and superficial young people get mowed down by a killer.

Instead, Seth Reiss and Will Tracy’s screenplay distributes the revelations with a careful sense of pacing and escalation, keeping a balance of sympathies between victims and mastermind. They clearly don’t expect audiences to go all in with people paying $1,250 each for a minimalist dinner, mostly to brag about the experience. They also don’t leave their victims as numbers. Margot naturally takes center stage, and Taylor-Joy gives her a fierce, snappy “I’m totally over this nonsense” energy that makes her a compelling protagonist. Hoult gives an equally solid performance as a man forced to come to terms with his own claims in a particularly painful way. But each character in turn gets a bit of stage time, including chef Slowik’s dedicated assistant, Elsa (newly arrived Hong Chau The whalebut most memorable as a villain in the 2019 watchmen series).

And Fiennes himself is a huge asset, as usual. He leads the action in his restaurant like a cult leader, puts on a warm, caring face when it suits the story, then brings a ruthless form of cold psychopathy to the table for other scenes. Trying to figure out what lies beneath its surface is one of the film’s greatest challenges and one of its greatest joys, mostly because it’s scripted and cast as a villain with a few likable wrinkles, a man who courts empathy and evokes horror at the same time.

Photo: Eric Zachanowich/Projector Pictures

The menu often reads like an expansive version of a one-tier play, where a group of people forced to come together gradually crack under the pressure and reveal new things about themselves. A lot of what keeps it going isn’t that stage energy, but the staging itself. set designer Ethan Tobman was inspired by everything from Luis Buñuel’s devastating 1962 film The Exterminating Angel (another movie about smug elites who can’t escape) to German expressionist architecture. He and cinematographer Peter Deming give the film a harsh, punishing coldness that underscores both the lack of comfort or warmth in haute cuisine and Chef Slowik’s state of mind. It’s a lavish, sensory-focused film, with something gripping to watch in every frame.

The menu doesn’t always add up, though. There’s a strange reluctance to commit to the film’s Grand Guignol potential, likely out of a desire to keep the cast on for the final act. There’s a disconnect between Chief Slowik’s hatred of his guests and the level of their comparative crimes, some of which are much more personal and meaningful than others. The film’s disregard for arrogance and entitlement is simple and satisfying, but when other motives begin to drive the story, like Elsa’s jealousy over Margot or Chief Slowik’s rage at not being remembered of each of his dishes, the story of revenge curdles a little.

Yet Reiss and Tracy’s willingness to implicate Chief Slowik with his futile, surface-obsessed plan yields The menu a surprising plot. As the pretentious chef Nicolas Cage calls him in PigSlowik created his own downfall and his own torment, and The menu don’t let it get away with playing like a simple morality tale eating the rich. The humor in this film is mostly subtle (especially in the hilarious and tongue-in-cheek lesson titles that appear on screen), but it’s ultimately as much a comedy as it is a horror thriller. There’s some biting tension as viewers wait to see how it all pans out, but Mylod and the writers also suggest it’s worth a bit of a laugh at everyone involved, serving up some fanciful versions. chaos or they just pay. the nose for it.

The menu is in theaters now.