The Menu review: Anya Taylor-Joy’s twisty thriller skewers, satisfies

Polygon will be reporting live from 2022 Fantastic Fest on horror, science-fiction, and action films. This review was published in conjunction with the film’s Fantastic Fest premiere.

2021’s movie scene of the year — the one that dominated critic and cinephile talk during awards season — came from Michael Sarnoski’s Pig, a deliriously violent but quiet thriller about Nicolas Cage’s ex-chef chasing down his stolen truffle pig. At one point, Cage’s character, Rob, a retired chef turned backwoods recluse, sits down in a ritzy haute cuisine restaurant and summons the chef, a former employee of his. Rob verbally slams Cage for abandoning his dream of opening a cozy pub. “Every day, you wake up and there’ll be less of you,” Rob tells the chef, who looks gutted — but not like he disagrees. “You live your life for them, and they don’t even see you. You don’t even see yourself.”

Mark Mylod’s black, bloody comedic thriller Menu plays out like a sequel to that scene, if the hapless high-end chef had decided to turn Rob’s revelation outward against his clientele instead of inward. Menu mocks the kind of people who would eat at that restaurant Chef Rob despises, with its “emulsified scallops” and “foraged huckleberry foam, bathed in the smoke from Douglas fir cones.” But it also finds a little humanity in them as well. It is amazing how filmmakers are able to find ways to subvert every target.

Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Margot, a last-minute date for rich foodie obsessive Tyler (Nicholas Hoult), who’s secured a seating at an exclusive restaurant on a private island, headed by the renowned Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes). Margot doesn’t care about the kind of food that consists of a few artfully spaced blotches of sauce on a plate, billed as a cheeky “breadless bread course.” But Tyler is obsessive about Chef Slowik’s work, and the possibility of earning his attention and interest. They’re an odd couple from the start, with a strange tension between them that suggests secrets waiting to be revealed.

Image: Searchlight Pictures

They aren’t the only ones with secrets. There are also a gossipy food critic (Janet McTeer), her assistant (Aimee Carero), and a trio loud techno boors (John Leguizamo and Aimee Carrero), who begin the evening boasting about fraudfully expensing their meal. A couple older than Margot might be among them. Then there’s Chef Slowik, who’s planned a dangerous “menu” for the evening designed to bring the secrets to light.

How far Chef Slowik is willing to go, and what’s going on with Margot, make up most of the complications in Menu It could be a familiar and grim revenge story that targets rich, entitled, rude and self-satisfied individuals. If there weren’t more going on under the surface, Menu would risk coming across as a fancy version of one of those teen slashers that’s more about watching symbolically obnoxious, shallow young people getting mown down by a killer.

Instead, Seth Reiss and Will Tracy’s script doles out the revelations with a careful sense of pacing and escalation, keeping a balance of sympathies between victims and mastermind. They clearly don’t expect the audience to entirely throw in with the people paying $1,250 apiece for a minimalist dinner, mostly for bragging rights about the experience. They don’t leave their victims as ciphers, either. Margot naturally gets center stage, and Taylor-Joy gives her a fierce, brittle “I’m totally over this nonsense” energy that makes her a compelling protagonist. Hoult does a great job as the man who is being forced to face his pretensions and do it in a very painful way. But each character in turn gets a little stage time, including Chef Slowik’s dedicated assistant, Elsa (Hong Chau, fresh off WhaleBut, the most memorable is the villain of the 2019 Watchmen series).

Fiennes is an excellent asset as well. As a cult leader, Fiennes guides the action at the restaurant and puts on a kind, sympathetic face whenever it suits the story. For other scenes, however, he brings his cold psychopathy down to the table. Trying to guess what’s under his surface is one of the movie’s bigger challenges, and one of its biggest joys, mostly because he’s scripted and performed as a villain with a few sympathetic wrinkles, a man who courts empathy and evokes horror at the same time.

Image: Searchlight Pictures

Menu It often feels like an extended version of one-set plays, in which a crowd of people are forced to come together and gradually break down under stress. This allows them to discover new aspects about themselves. A lot of what keeps it going isn’t that stagey energy, but the staging itself. production designer Ethan Tobman was inspired by everything from Luis Buñuel’s devastating 1962 film The Exterminating Angel (another film about smug elites who can’t escape each other) to German expressionist architecture. He and cinematographer Peter Deming give the film a harsh, punishing chilliness that emphasizes both the lack of comfort or warmth in haute cuisine and the state of Chef Slowik’s mind. It’s an appropriately sumptuous and sense-driven film, with something striking to look at in every frame.

Menu doesn’t always add up, though. There’s a strange unwillingness to commit to the film’s Grand Guignol potential, likely out of a desire to keep the cast around for the final act. There’s a disconnect between Chef Slowik’s hatred of his guests and the level of their comparative crimes, some of which are far more personal and meaningful than others. The film’s contempt for arrogance and entitlement is straightforward and satisfying, but when other motives start driving the story, like Elsa’s jealousy over Margot or Chef Slowik’s rage over not having each of his dishes remembered, the revenge story curdles a bit.

Still, Reiss and Tracy’s willingness to implicate Chef Slowik along with his vain, surface-obsessed plan gives MenuSome startling intrigue. Nicolas Cage, a pretentious chef calls it in PigSlowik was responsible for his downfall, as well as his torment. Menu doesn’t let him off the hook by playing out as a straightforward eat-the-rich morality tale. This movie has a lot of humor, especially in the humorously funny course titles. But it’s a comedy that is as scary as horror. There’s some knuckle-biting tension as viewers wait to see how it’ll all play out, but Mylod and the writers also suggest that it’s worth chuckling a little at everyone involved, whether they’re serving up fancy versions of mayhem or just paying through the nose for it.

MenuNovember 18: Premieres in Theaters