"Savor; do not eat" says chef Julian Slowik of the Hawthorne restaurant to his privileged wealthy guests. That could be well taken for the film itself, since it probably won't make sense without that.
Margot is the fairly uninterested surprise guest at Slowik's exclusive dinner, filling in for a date her companion had previously had going with him, and Margot isn't really there for the food as it is. She sees it as overwrought, pretentious, and overall unfulfilling, and as the official menu proceedings take place, the menu becomes more twisted and shocking until it becomes explicitly clear to Margot and the other diners that everyone's life is in danger.
For a film skewering wealth and pretension in a "trapped with the psychopath chef" story, there are several directions the film rather pointedly seems to avoid. It doesn't literalize "eat the rich". It also doesn't play as a Dwindling Party death game or slasher. Everyone is threatened, and death is spread out, but this is not a performance that kills the guests one by one. The tone also shifts between viewings. First watch, it's too unsettling and menacing to call a comedy, but later viewings feel too vindictively hilarious to call it horror. The whole-picture commentary turns the affair from psychological terror to deliciously extra petty revenge. There are brilliant bits of absurdity and snark, but the film works effectively to make genuine unease and tension, and the theatrics are so unhinged that it feels more artsy than parodic. Think of this as a much less gory, culinary Midsommar.
The cast works great. Margot could have been insufferably wry and pushed too hard to be "relatable", but Anya Taylor-Joy makes her the true no-bullshit heart of the film. Slowik is portrayed wonderfully by Ralph Fiennes, being menacing but not as cold or malicious as you would expect this villain to be. Hong Chau's Elsa, an impenetrably polite maître d', may be the most menacing and compelling performance of the film. She's so uncanny and rote that you can mistake her for missing social cues when she's actually being very sarcastic.
I adore how this bonkers film resolves in psychology and the theme of the damage that working unappreciated can do, while indulging in a cathartic revenge fantasy through a service worker's eyes. The theme of the film is the nature of art and labor as service and the dysfunction when the rich fail to appreciate the passion of the workers they consume from, and service work is well uplifted by this film. The horror isn't that the chef is evil.
Dark, twisted, funny, poignant, and satirical.
"Savor; do not eat" says chef Julian Slowik of the Hawthorne restaurant to his privileged wealthy guests. That could be well taken for the film itself, since it probably won't make sense without that.
Margot is the fairly uninterested surprise guest at Slowik's exclusive dinner, filling in for a date her companion had previously had going with him, and Margot isn't really there for the food as it is. She sees it as overwrought, pretentious, and overall unfulfilling, and as the official menu proceedings take place, the menu becomes more twisted and shocking until it becomes explicitly clear to Margot and the other diners that everyone's life is in danger.
For a film skewering wealth and pretension in a "trapped with the psychopath chef" story, there are several directions the film rather pointedly seems to avoid. It doesn't literalize "eat the rich". It also doesn't play as a Dwindling Party death game or slasher. Everyone is threatened, and death is spread out, but this is not a performance that kills the guests one by one. The tone also shifts between viewings. First watch, it's too unsettling and menacing to call a comedy, but later viewings feel too vindictively hilarious to call it horror. The whole-picture commentary turns the affair from psychological terror to deliciously extra petty revenge. There are brilliant bits of absurdity and snark, but the film works effectively to make genuine unease and tension, and the theatrics are so unhinged that it feels more artsy than parodic. Think of this as a much less gory, culinary Midsommar.
The cast works great. Margot could have been insufferably wry and pushed too hard to be "relatable", but Anya Taylor-Joy makes her the true no-bullshit heart of the film. Slowik is portrayed wonderfully by Ralph Fiennes, being menacing but not as cold or malicious as you would expect this villain to be. Hong Chau's Elsa, an impenetrably polite maître d', may be the most menacing and compelling performance of the film. She's so uncanny and rote that you can mistake her for missing social cues when she's actually being very sarcastic.
I adore how this bonkers film resolves in psychology and the theme of the damage that working unappreciated can do, while indulging in a cathartic revenge fantasy through a service worker's eyes. The theme of the film is the nature of art and labor as service and the dysfunction when the rich fail to appreciate the passion of the workers they consume from, and service work is well uplifted by this film. The horror isn't that the chef is evil.
It's that, unlike the emulsion, he is broken.