The Menu

Foodies with a taste for horror and warped humor will revel in the film The Menu (2022.) The movie is deliciously subversive, feeding on the absurdities of haute cuisine and the performance art aspect of fine dining. It is a scathingly biting satire that is performed with straight-faced brilliance by a superb cast led by Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy. Carnivores and carnage aficionados will have their appetites satiated in this irreverent take on restaurant reverence.

Fiennes portrays celebrity chef Julian Slowik. Chef Julian’s obsession with minutiae and perfection dominates his kitchen. His creepily loyal staff follow his commands to the letter, bunking on the premises since his renowned restaurant Hawthorne is situated on a private island. For a special dinner, Chef Slowik has assembled a carefully selected guest list. There is a food critic (played by Janet Teer), and her editor (Paul Adelson), a fading movie star (John Leguizamo) and his assistant (Aimee Carrero), a wealthy couple (Judith Light and Reed Birney) who have savored the chef’s cuisine on multiple occasions, a tech executive (Arturo Castro) and two tech investors (Rob Yang and Mark St. Cyr), a sycophantic foodie (Nicholas Hoult) and his plus-one for the evening (Ms. Taylor-Joy.) The cat and mouse game between the chef and his diners plays out rather like an Agatha Christie mystery peppered with bon mots worthy of Hannibal Lecter.

The scathingly witty dialogue is a good part of the macabre fun and the film’s writers, Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, deserve praise for striking a balance between gags and plot elements that could be regarded as gag inducing. Consider the chef’s self-serving welcome to the diners: “Over the next few hours you will ingest fat, salt, sugar, protein, bacteria, fungi, various plants, and animals. And at times, entire ecosystems. But I have to beg of you one thing. It’s just one: Do not eat. Savor. Relish. Consider every morsel that you place inside your mouth. Be mindful. But do not eat. Our menu is too precious for that.” Actor Fiennes embodies the egotistical epicurean, delivering a polished sharpness to his lines with the precision of a guillotine.

As the obsequious foodie, Nicholas Hoult is the epitome of smarmy. His blind worship of the chef is akin to that of a cult member. And the restaurant staff seem to suffer from the same over-the-top cult of personality affliction. The other diners display a sort of snarky yet starstruck attitude, with only the character played by Taylor-Joy showing immunity to culinary charisma. She finds the autocratic environment distasteful and the palate pretentiousness quite laughable.

Audience members laugh out loud during the film and some of us feel a trifle guilty for being such gluttons for gallows’ humor. I will certainly raise a glass to toast the movie’s director, Mark Mylod, for deft straddling of two genres and his handling of the outrageous material. Another toast is required for the fine dining consultants who worked on the movie, including an actual food designer. Plus, here’s to the producers: they include Will Ferrell, Adam McKay, and Betsy Koch; names that resonate in the world of entertainment.

The Menu is not your standard fare. It is a cut above the usual horror-comedy. Well done and on point, it is sauciness served with style.