12 strangers travel to a small island with a unique restaurant run by a nerdy and legendary chef, Slovik (the evil Ralph Fiennes). The chef promises to surprise guests for several hours with the “taste buds” (quote from the movie) fed the most incredible high-quality food, but there is one caveat – not everyone will survive dessert.
The starting point of the “menu” is reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s “Ten Little Indians”: guests of the institution gathered on a remote island, familiar strangers – people from completely different worlds, united by their common flaws. There’s a trio of corporate businessmen who get rich by money laundering, a very wealthy wives couple whose husband not only cheats on his wife, but does it with a hideous pervert, there’s an arrogant actor – a “fallen pilot” whose career has long since deteriorated, a rogue who deceived his employer to ruin his life. There’s an assistant, a few restaurant critics whose buyers are too poisoned to please them with their inner bile, and a few young men – a boy and a girl whose relationship isn’t immediately clear.
Shot from the movie “Menu” (2022)
Alien Productions
A young man named Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) is a kind of supporter of Chef Slovik, a pseudo-connoisseur and connoisseur of high-end cuisine and also a man with very specific views on food. Her friend Margo (Anya Taylor-Joy) is the strangest item in this shambles, arriving on the island by accident: Tyler called her at the last moment and took the place of the heroine of the girl who dumped him the day before.
Unlike the others, Margo does not know exactly where she has arrived and what to expect from this evening, but she herself remains a mystery for a long time. Firstly for Chef Slovik, who meticulously scrutinizes his guests before dinner begins.
We can barely catch a taste of Ari Astaire’s “Solstice”, as well as “Ten Little Indians” written by Mike Mylod. The guests who come to the island tour the area, explaining how all the ingredients are prepared and how the subordinates live. It turns out that the local way of life and mode of existence is more like a kind of commune, if not a sect – they are isolated from the world, live in a barracks-type room under the same roof and do not serve much gastronomic art. as their idol – the hero of Fiennes.
Chef Slovik, played by the actor, is, of course, a variant of Voldemort, if JK Rowling wrote not a children’s tale but an adult thriller about class stratification, human depravity, and a sense of resentment that could just ruin a human’s life, but also the taste of everyone’s food.
Fiennes’ hero says succinct but blood-curdling things when he opens his mouth. The initially theatrical and even flamboyant way of serving food is gradually replaced by frightening chaos. It goes from stories about how the chef found this or that gastronomic masterpiece to self-disclosure and even confession that none of those present were ready. As in Fincher’s cult thriller “Seven” – the villain who punishes sinners confesses to his own vice.
Shot from the movie “Menu” (2022)
Alien Productions
And if everything goes to the rhythm of the picture, then at some point its filling begins to deteriorate. “Menu” is definitely a genre movie, shot on the principle of abundance: there are so many secret passages and loaded guns hanging on the walls that you risk quickly overeating all of them. Even though one of the movie’s best quotes is “You’ll eat less than you want, more than you deserve”.
After the separation of Emma Stone and her predecessor Alexander Payne, director Mylod, who took over the project, tries not to exaggerate and stretch the joy of the horror on the screen with sharp moments. The movie holds up the suspense perfectly and doesn’t reveal its secret to the end: why was this culinary torture necessary?
The “Menu” works flawlessly, like a genre experiment in which unexpected ingredients are added to an intricate film platter. There’s a place for chilling horror and caustic satire, bitter drama and fiery black comedy. The main duelists of the screen, Fiennes and Taylor-Joy, are perfectly opposing forces and seem to be made of the same dough. Their confrontation is the lively spark of the film, its powerful dramatic engine.
Shot from the movie “Menu” (2022)
Alien Productions
And while the viewer, unaccustomed to this kind of cinematic refinement, may have questions after watching, it’s hard to deny the film’s creativity. This is truly a delicious film with an excellent presentation: surprisingly resourceful and at the same time so distorted that after watching the audience, like a visitor to an expensive restaurant, he could not decipher the exact composition of the dish’s ingredients. .
Source: Gazeta
Brandon Hall is an author at “Social Bites”. He is a cultural aficionado who writes about the latest news and developments in the world of art, literature, music, and more. With a passion for the arts and a deep understanding of cultural trends, Brandon provides engaging and thought-provoking articles that keep his readers informed and up-to-date on the latest happenings in the cultural world.