OnScreen Review: "The Menu"
Ken Jones, Chief Film Critic
There are some wonderful movies out there for people who love food. My personal favorite is Babette’s Feast, but Ratatouille, Chef, Big Night, and the four Trip movies are just some of the many options of movies appreciating the culinary arts. However, there have not been many in the horror/thriller genre, though horror/thriller and foodie porn might not be the first mashup that comes to one’s mind. Nevertheless, The Menu is just such a film, a darkly comedic horror tale about a deranged celebrity chef and his incredibly devout kitchen staff.
Hawthorne is one of the most exclusive restaurants in the world. It is accessible only by boat, located on a private island, and a very expensive dining experience. The restaurant is run by a world-renowned chef, Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes), who lives on the island along with his staff, including Elsa (Hong Chau), the maître d’. The guests to Hawthorne on this particular night include Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) and his date, Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), along with a food critic (Janet McTeer) and subservient editor (Paul Adelstein), a wealthy couple (Reed Bierney & Judith Light), a group of tech bros (Arturo Castro, Rob Yang, and M St. Cyr), and a has-been actor/director (John Leguizamo) and his assistant (Aimee Carrero). As the meal courses progress, things increasingly seem off and the night soon takes a dramatic, horrific turn for the patrons of Hawthorne, turning into a night of survival and comeuppance mixed in with their fine dining experience.
Taylor-Joy’s Margot is an outsider and an interloper of sorts to the festivities of the night, a last-minute change in the guest list that throws a small wrench into a carefully crafted night as everyone on the guest list was picked for a reason. Her presence as an unknown quality is sand in the gears for Fiennes’ Slowikk because he is very particular and precise, and his meals are made with his patrons in mind. At one point, before the night takes a turn to crazy town, he confronts her in the bathroom while sneaking a smoke, asking who she is and why she is there.
The initial impression of Hawthorne is that of a small piece of paradise, where the meals are locally grown and harvested. But there is also a cult compound quality to the island too. Fiennes’ Slowikk has a house on the island that is off limits to everyone else. All of the staff lives in a barracks, with an open floor layout of two rows of cots and a toilet out in the open at the far end of the room. According to Elsa, this setup creates maximum efficiency for the staff.
Fiennes gives a great performance as a man who is held in high esteem but has clearly snapped in a subtle way that is not immediately clear to his patrons until it is too late. He has seen his love for food and his attempt to bring something artistic to give to the world become perverted and cheapened by rich people who take it for granted, or people like Tyler who have to take a picture of their food to post on the Instagram before eating it. Slowik has become the Colonel Kurtz of the cooking world and this night is his Apocalypse Now, complete with his small band of loyal soldiers who will go to any extreme for him and his culinary vision, however demented and twisted it may be. They are all true believers in his vision.
Taylor-Joy and Fiennes are the stars of the film, and Hoult has the biggest supporting actor role, but it is a terrific ensemble performance. All of the various groups at the dinner have their intriguing backstories and various vices and unique interplay. All of them are a delight, but the food critic and her editor as well as the past-his-prime Hollywood star with his assistant are particularly delightful, as is the subtly menacing and no-nonsense Elsa. The story is a variation of The Most Dangerous Game conceit, but also shares similar themes to more recent movies like You’re Next (2011), Ready or Not (2019), The Invitation (2015), and even this year’s Bodies Bodies Bodies.
Amidst the dark humor of the film, there is a foodie movie in there too that is sure to please plenty of people. Before the first course is served, Slowik instructs his guests to not eat their food, but to taste their food, and it comes across as pretentious. Every course of the meal is meticulously planned and presented with a short story. Every course is given a title card on the screen and brief, increasingly hilarious descriptions of the food being served. The courses are really what reveal the increasingly unstable tenor of the night, as some of the patrons begin to be perturbed by the avant-garde breadless bread course and then firmly rebuffed by the staff.
The Menu has momentary bursts of violence, but for the most part it is atmospheric thriller with increasing stakes and desperation that is well crafted and delightful in its own darkly funny way. The Menu is twisted fun.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars