This week, Seth Lukas Hynes reviews The Menu, Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult and Ralph Fiennes.
Rated MA15+
4.5/5
The Menu is a gastronomically satisfying dark comedy horror film.
A young couple, Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) and Tyler (Nicholas Hoult), attend a lavish dinner at the exclusive Hawthorne island restaurant, but their culinary experience soon turns sinister.
The Menu threads the needle as all great dark comedies must: it’s tense and disturbing yet raucously funny. It’s also rare to find a satire that sticks so thoroughly to its thesis and infuses its main characters with such nuance.
The sumptuous cinematography revels in the beauty of food, while the witty dialogue and snarky title cards skewer the pretentiousness of posh tasting menus and elitist food culture. Ralph Fiennes is commanding and subtly menacing as Julian Slowik, the owner of the Hawthorne; Taylor-Joy conveys grace and resolve as Margot, and Hoult plays a hilarious straight-man, with Tyler as a fawning fanboy oblivious to the stress and violence around him. The other diners are simple but well-defined, and as the tension tightens and Julian’s sadism ramps up, you feel sympathy for the guests even as you laugh at their poetic torments.
Margot stands out as the most down-to-earth diner, unmoved by Julian’s showy dishes, and she and Julian form an unlikely connection as servers disillusioned with their art. I won’t give anything away, but the climax is a superb example of having your cake and eating it too, celebrating simple, satisfying food while bringing Julian’s mission of food as narrative and expression to an explosive conclusion.
I wonder if The Menu was partially inspired by a 2021 article by Geraldine DeRuiter, which recounts a bizarre tasting menu experience in Italy that left DeRuiter and her friends bemused, unsettled and starving.
The Menu is a fulfilling meal of clever, visually stunning dark comedy, and is playing in most Victorian cinemas.
– Seth Lukas Hynes
