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The Menu review: an unpredictable and viciously funny thriller

“The Menu is a scathing, satirical thriller that makes it easy to get lost in the power of Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy's lead performances.”

• Ralph Fiennes' pitch-perfect performance
• A clever, biting script
• A well-cast ensemble
• Several underwritten supporting characters
• A third act that gets a little too silly
• Two last-minute twists that fall flat

The Menu is a charbroiled, scathing piece of genre filmmaking. Its script, which was penned by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, takes so many shots at so many targets that the film ends up having the same texture and bite as a marinated bird that’s still got pieces of buckshot in it. If that makes it sound like The Menu is a scattered blast of satire, that’s because it is, and not all of the shots that the film takes prove to be as accurate as others. It is, nonetheless, one of the more enjoyable and engaging social thrillers that have come out of Hollywood’s ongoing post- Get Out era .

That’s due, in no small part, to how The Menu cleverly uses the increasingly popular realm of avant-garde cooking as a vehicle to make many of its often blisteringly funny critiques of the world’s social and financial elite. By setting its story in a field that has only been explored in a handful of recent films, The Menu is largely able to keep many of its increasingly common social critiques from growing stale. The success of the film can also be directly linked to Ralph Fiennes’ straight-faced, pitch-perfect performance as the orchestrator of all of The Menu ’s many unpredictable thrills, chills, and laughs.

Fiennes stars in the film as Julian Slowik, a celebrity chef who has taken to living full-time on the isolated island where his high-end restaurant, Hawthorne, is located. The Menu doesn’t follow Slowik, though. Instead, it takes the perspective of Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), a woman who has been invited by Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) to take part in an exclusive night of dining at Hawthorne. The pair are joined on their voyage by a number of snobbish patrons, including an arrogant food critic (Janet McTeer), a has-been movie star (John Leguizamo), and a trio of oblivious financial sector bros.

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Once Tyler, Margot, and the rest of Slowik’s diners arrive for their night at Hawthorne, though, things quickly begin to take a dark, surprisingly morbid turn. Before long, it’s clear that Slowik’s plans for the evening aren’t nearly as simple as his latest batch of patrons expected. His vision for the night is threatened, however, by the presence of Margot, who Tyler invited at the last minute after his original date (understandably) broke up with him.

Margot’s arrival allows The Menu to become not only a high-tension thriller , but also a battle of wills between her and Fiennes’ Slowik, who she has far more in common with than either might initially think. Although that might sound like a lot for The Menu to take on, especially given the delightfully mean-spirited streak of satire that runs throughout it, the film manages to successfully blend its thriller, horror, and comedy elements together for most of its runtime. Even in the moments when The Menu leans a little too hard into comedy or horror, most of which occur during its messy third act, the film always corrects itself quickly enough to stop it from going totally off the rails.

The film’s performers also clearly understand the assignment that they’ve been given and, as a result, everyone on screen manages to turn in performances that feel both slyly tongue-in-cheek and totally committed. Of the film’s many performers, no one stands out quite like Fiennes, though, who is given a role in The Menu that allows him to fully weaponize some of his greatest strengths, including his unique ability to combine Slowik’s attitude of knowing arrogance with a kind of raw, untempered rage.

Opposite him, Taylor-Joy turns in another reliably commanding performance in a role that really only lets her really spread her wings once, though the moment in question is one of the best that The Menu has to offer.  Hoult, meanwhile, gives a totally clueless performance as the ultra-annoying Tyler that not only calls to mind his scene-stealing turn in Yorgos Lanthimos ’ The Favourite , but which also cements him as one of the more quietly versatile actors of his generation. Hong Chau makes a similarly effective mark as Elsa, the tempered but ruthless second-in-command to Fiennes’ Slowik.

Behind the scenes, director Mark Mylod and editor Christopher Tellefsen ensure that The Menu maintains a fairly brisk pace for the entirety of its 106-minute runtime. Even the film’s exposition-heavy opening prologue clips by quickly, thanks to the operatic, almost Bong Joon-ho-esque cutting style that Mylod and Tellefsen implement throughout it. While there are moments when it seems like The Menu could stand to be a little nastier and more gnarly, Mylod wisely knows when to pause his constantly roving visual style in order to allow the film’s more uncomfortable scenes to truly breathe and build.

As has been the case with many of the social genre thrillers that Hollywood has produced over the past five years, The Menu doesn’t totally stick its landing. The film’s third act, in particular, attempts to stack gag-upon-gag-upon-gag in the hopes of heightening The Menu ’s stakes and tension, but most of them just end up creating unnecessary logic gaps. Those moments inevitably end up preventing The Menu from emerging as the kind of artfully prepared, five-star meal that its fictional chefs so desperately want to deliver. What The Menu does provide, though, is the kind of admirably bare-bones experience that’ll leave most patrons smiling and, above all else, satisfied.

The Menu is now playing in theaters nationwide. For more on the film, read our article on The Menu ‘s ending, explained .

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“Had she said no, the film would never have seen the light of day,” director Todd Field said in a statement about his ambitious new drama, Tár. He was, of course, talking about the film’s star, Cate Blanchett, whose reputation as one of Hollywood’s greatest living actresses certainly precedes her at this point. Despite that fact, it would be easy to initially shrug off Field’s comment as nothing more than a pandering or superficial remark. After all, what director wouldn’t say that about the lead star of their film, especially someone of Blanchett’s caliber?

Having seen Tár, though, the truth of Field’s comment is undeniably clear. In order for it to cast any kind of spell, Tár requires a performer with Blanchett’s charismatic, towering presence. It demands someone who can not only disappear into a character, but who can do so and still be able to command every scene partner who has the misfortune of being pitted against her. Blanchett does that and more in Tár.

Vesper does a lot with a little. Despite being made on an obviously lower budget than most other modern sci-fi movies, the new film from directors Kristina Buozyte and Bruno Samper takes place in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic world that feels more well-realized, vivid, and imaginative than any of Hollywood’s current cinematic universes do. While its premise doesn’t do much to sell Vesper as a unique entry into the dystopian sci-fi genre, either, it doesn’t take long for its fictional alternate reality to emerge as a striking new vision of the future.

The film's opening shot throws viewers headfirst into a swampy, gray world that seems, at first, to be perpetually covered in fog. It's an image that makes Vesper’s connections to other industrialized sci-fi films like Stalker undeniably, palpably clear. However, once Vesper escapes the foggy wasteland of its opening scene, it begins to flesh out its futuristic reality with rich shades of greens and colorful plants that breathe and reach out toward any living thing that comes close to them. While watching the film does, therefore, often feel like you’re being led on a tour through an industrial hellscape, it also feels, at times, like a trip down the rabbit hole and straight into Wonderland.

Entergalactic isn’t like most other animated movies that you’ll see this year — or any year, for that matter. The film, which was created by Scott Mescudi a.k.a. Kid Cudi and executive producer Kenya Barris, was originally intended to be a TV series. Now, it’s set to serve as a 92-minute companion to Cudi’s new album of the same name. That means Entergalactic not only attempts to tell its own story, one that could have easily passed as the plot of a Netflix original rom-com, but it does so while also featuring several sequences that are set to specific Cudi tracks.

Beyond the film’s musical elements, Entergalactic is also far more adult than viewers might expect it to be. The film features several explicit sex scenes and is as preoccupied with the sexual politics of modern-day relationships as it is in, say, street art or hip-hop. While Entergalactic doesn’t totally succeed in blending all of its disparate elements together, the film’s vibrantly colorful aesthetic and infectiously romantic mood make it a surprisingly sweet, imaginative tour through a fairytale version of New York City.

The obscenely wealthy are having a tough time at the movies lately. Last month, Ruben Östlund stuck a bunch of them on a luxury yacht and watched them projectile vomit all over each other in “ Triangle of Sadness .” Next week, Rian Johnson will stick a bunch of them on a private Greek island to watch them wonder who among them is a killer in “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.”

But this week, members of the extreme 1% just get stuck—as in skewered, and grilled—in “The Menu.” Director Mark Mylod satirizes a very specific kind of elitism here with his wildly over-the-top depiction of the gourmet food world. This is a place where macho tech bros, snobby culture journalists, washed-up celebrities, and self-professed foodies are all deluded enough to believe they’re as knowledgeable as the master chef himself. Watching them preen and try to one-up each other provides much of the enjoyment in the sharp script from Seth Reiss and Will Tracy .

But the build-up to what’s happening at this insanely expensive restaurant on the secluded island of Hawthorne is more intriguing than the actual payoff. The performances remain prickly, the banter deliciously snappy. And “The Menu” is always exquisite from a technical perspective. But you may find yourself feeling a bit hungry after this meal is over.

An eclectic mix of people boards a ferry for the quick trip to their storied destination. Chef Slowik’s fine-tuned, multi-course dinners are legendary—and exorbitant, at $1,250 a person. “What, are we eating a Rolex?” the less-than-impressed Margot ( Anya Taylor-Joy ) quips to her date, Tyler ( Nicholas Hoult ), as they’re waiting for the boat to arrive. He considers himself a culinary connoisseur and has been dreaming of this evening for ages; she’s a cynic who’s along for the ride. They’re gorgeous and look great together, but there’s more to this relationship than initially meets the eye. Both actors have a keen knack for this kind of rat-a-tat banter, with Hoult being particularly adept at playing the arrogant fool, as we’ve seen on Hulu’s “The Great.” And the always brilliant Taylor-Joy, as our conduit, brings a frisky mix of skepticism and sex appeal.

Also on board are a once-popular actor ( John Leguizamo ) and his beleaguered assistant ( Aimee Carrero ); three obnoxious, entitled tech dudes ( Rob Yang , Arturo Castro , and Mark St . Cyr); a wealthy older man and his wife ( Reed Birney and Judith Light ); and a prestigious food critic ( Janet McTeer ) with her obsequious editor ( Paul Adelstein ). But regardless of their status, they all pay deference to the star of the night: the man whose artful and inspired creations brought them there. Ralph Fiennes plays Chef Slowik with a disarming combination of Zen-like calm and obsessive control. He begins each course with a thunderous clap of his hands, which Mylod heightens skillfully to put us on edge, and his loyal cooks behind him respond in unison to his every demand with a spirited “Yes, Chef!” as if he were their drill sergeant. And the increasingly amusing on-screen descriptions of the dishes provide amusing commentary on how the night is evolving as a whole.

Of these characters, Birney and Light’s are the least developed. It’s particularly frustrating to have a performer of the caliber of Light and watch her languish with woefully little to do. She is literally “the wife.” There is nothing to her beyond her instinct to stand by her man dutifully, regardless of the evening’s disturbing revelations. Conversely, Hong Chau is the film’s MVP as Chef Slowik’s right-hand woman, Elsa. She briskly and efficiently provides the guests with a tour of how the island operates before sauntering among their tables, seeing to their every need and quietly judging them. She says things like: “Feel free to observe our cooks as they innovate” with total authority and zero irony, adding greatly to the restaurant’s rarefied air.

The personalized treatment each guest receives at first seems thoughtful, and like the kind of pampering these people would expect when they pay such a high price. But in time, the specifically tailored dishes take on an intrusive, sinister, and violent tone, which is clever to the viewer but terrifying to the diner. The service remains rigid and precise, even as the mood gets messy. And yet—as in the other recent movies indicting the ultra-rich—“The Menu” ultimately isn’t telling us anything we don’t already know. It becomes heavy-handed and obvious in its messaging. Mind-boggling wealth corrupts people. You don’t say.

But “The Menu” remains consistently dazzling as a feast for the eyes and ears. The dreamy cinematography from Peter Deming makes this private island look impossibly idyllic. The sleek, chic production design from Ethan Tobman immediately sets the mood of understated luxury, and Mylod explores the space in inventive ways, with overhead shots not only of the food but also of the restaurant floor itself. The Altmanesque sound design offers overlapping snippets of conversation, putting us right in the mix. And the taunting and playful score from Colin Stetson enhances the film’s rhythm, steadily ratcheting up the tension.

It’s a nice place to visit—but you wouldn’t want to eat there.

Now playing in theaters. 

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series “Ebert Presents At the Movies” opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Ralph Fiennes as Chef Slowik
• Nicholas Hoult as Tyler
• Anya Taylor-Joy as Margot
• Hong Chau as Elsa
• Janet McTeer as Lillian Bloom
• Judith Light as Anne
• John Leguizamo as Movie Star
• Rob Yang as Bryce
• Mark St. Cyr as Dave
• Reed Birney as Richard
• Aimee Carrero as Felicity
• Arturo Castro as Soren
• Christopher Tellefsen
• Colin Stetson

Cinematographer

• Peter Deming

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The Ending of The Menu , Explained

When the food is so good, it's to die for.

Dinner is served on The Menu , the new horror-thriller following a group of wealthy foodies traveling to a remote island to dine at the exclusive (and unfathomably expensive) restaurant Hawthorne. Starring Anya Taylor-Joy , Ralph Fiennes, and Nicholas Hoult, the film takes on a searing critique of the banalities and bewilderments of the ultra rich, whose insular obsession with their self-importance ultimately leads to their own demise.

In The Menu , r enowned chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) meticulously crafts a dining experience tailored to 11 of the restaurant's patrons—but the unexpected appearance of Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), a sex worker hired to accompany fellow guest Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) to dinner, ruins his plans.

Ahead, we explain the movie's shocking ending. (Proceed at your own risk—spoilers are ahead!)

What happens at the end of The Menu ? Does Margot survive?

Erin, an escort who goes by the name Margot while working), accompanies Tyler, a cult follower of chef Julian Slowik, to an exclusive dinner prepared at Julian's high-end restaurant, Hawthorne. The restaurant, located on a remote island where Julian and his army of kitchen staff live and work, promises a night of culinary storytelling to its wealthy patrons—but, little do they realize that they're on the menu.

Julian plays the part of the mad genius, driven to despair despite his acclaim due to his clientele's nonchalant disregard for his craft. His solution? To liberate himself and his patrons with one last meal, in which he slowly reveals to them the sins of their ways (cheating scandals, money laundering, et cetera). As the night goes on and as people are shot, stabbed, and sliced at, the diners gradually realize that they and all of Hawthorne's workers—including Julian—will die.

Unfortunately for Julian, Erin's arrival throws a wrench in his dinner plans. Tyler, who still willingly came to the island after Julian secretly confided his murderous plans to him ahead of time, hired Erin after his original plus one broke up with him. Initially, Julian attempts to rectify the unforeseen damage by asking Erin to choose a side: stand with the workers or stand with the patrons. She chooses the workers, and Julian sends her on a mission outside of the restaurant to retrieve a canister. Instead, she ventures into Julian's house, where she happens across his treasured career memorabilia, like a photo of him happily flipping burgers when he was a young chef, and a radio. On the radio, she desperately sends out an SOS call, but the Coast Guard officer who arrives turns out to be in on Julian's master plan.

The night forges on, with the last, fatal course imminent. Making a last-ditch effort to escape, Erin confronts Julian head-on, telling him that dessert can't be served yet because she's still starving. She says it like a challenge, which Julian eagerly takes up. When Julian asks her what she'd like to eat, she tells him she wants a simple cheeseburger. What follows is a delicious montage of Julian whipping up the fast food staple, wearing the same rare smile in the photo Erin discovered.

When Julian finishes cooking, Erin graciously accepts the burger, taking a generous bite of the dish. Afterwards, she apprehensively tells him that she overestimated her appetite and asks if she can take the burger to-go. Stunningly, he relents, even giving her a doggy bag for her troubles.

She escapes into the night, heading out into the water via the abandoned Coast Guard boat just in time to see the restaurant erupt into flames behind her. Julian had covered the restaurant and his guests in giant marshmallows, chocolate syrup, and graham cracker crumbles—his lethal interpretation of s'mores—before igniting Hawthorne.

As the ship's engine stalls in the dark of night, Erin, exhausted, sits on the bow and looks out at the fire. She opens up the takeout box and finishes the rest of her meal.

Why did Julian spare Erin's life?

The one thing Julian lacks in his illustrious career as a chef is joy. Erin picks up on this and, in mocking his intellectualism and avant-garde menu, she forces him to rekindle his love of cooking by making her a cheeseburger.

"Ralph’s character and Anya’s character are about connection," director Mark Mylod told Den of Geek . "Ultimately, she has manipulated him. He also realized that she’s manipulating him but he allows her to win. All the unspoken business is in the final discourse between them and the burger. It’s a mutual understanding… and he allows her to go 'checkmate.'"

By restoring his integrity as a cook in his final moments, letting Erin escape death is almost Julian's way of expressing his gratitude.

Why don't the diners fight back?

By the time Julian's sous chef shoots himself in the forehead, it should be apparent to every one of the diners that the night has taken a turn for the worst. And yet, the night progresses with little pushback from the terrified patrons.

As Mylod explains, "The absolute futility of escape coupled with the journey they’ve been on, that whisper in the air of Slowik’s words over that evening, over the dinner, the combination of those two elements is just taking them to a place of absolute naked submission." And it doesn't help that there were plenty of cooks keeping guard at all of the restaurant's exits.

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‘The Menu’ Review: Eat, Pray, Run!

Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy face off in this pitch-black satire of class and high-end dining.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

There is nothing subtle about “The Menu,” but that’s a large part of its charm. Like Hawthorn, the exclusive upscale restaurant where most of the action takes place, this brutal satire of class division — viewed through the lens of high-end gorging — is ruthlessly focused and gleamingly efficient. And by unabashedly flaunting its crowd-pleasing ambitions, the script (by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy) cheekily skirts the very pretentiousness it aims to skewer.

At Hawthorn, set on its own island in the Pacific Northwest, every dish comes with a side of ego and a lecture on its provenance by Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes), a rock-star chef with a drill-sergeant’s demeanor. In his dining room, mere feet from an army of obsequious underlings, drooling one-percenters have each dropped $1,250 to wrap their gums around Slowik’s fabled tasting menu. Among them are a star-struck foodie (Nicholas Hoult) and his last-minute date, Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy); an arrogant restaurant critic (Janet McTeer); three odious tech workers (Rob Yang, Arturo Castro and Mark St. Cyr); and a fading movie star (John Leguizamo) hoping to pitch a culinary travel show. All except Margot have been carefully chosen, and all are about to become players in Slowik’s elaborate opera of humiliation, self-loathing and revenge.

From amuse-bouche to dessert, Slowik’s creations — and the diners’ punishments — grow steadily more bizarre and threatening. In service to a gleefully malicious tone, Mark Mylod’s direction is cool, tight and clipped, the actors slotting neatly into characters so unsympathetic we become willing accessories to their suffering. Fiennes is fabulous as a man so determined to turn food into art that he’s forgotten its very purpose; his disgust for the act of eating has long extinguished any joy in cooking.

“Even your hot dishes are cold,” spits Margot, the audience surrogate and the first to challenge the insult embedded in each course, like the “bread plate” with no bread. Intrigued by her working-class wiliness, Slowik is unsettled: He can see that she’s willing to take him on.

Whisking splashes of horror into culinary comedy (“Don’t touch the protein, it’s immature,” admonishes the forbidding hostess during a smokehouse tour), “The Menu” is black, broad and sometimes clumsy, attacking its issues more often with cleaver than paring knife. Yet everyone is having such a good time, it’s impossible not to join them. The movie’s eye might be on haute cuisine, but its heart is pure fish and chips.

The Menu Rated R for slaying, suicide and exuberant oversaucing. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In theaters.

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‘The Menu’ Review: Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy in a Restaurant Thriller That Gives Foodie Culture the Slicing and Dicing It Deserves

It's at once a Michelin Star version of "Saw" and a tasty satire of what high-end dining has become.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

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If you’re someone who considers themself a foodie (and I totally am), chances are there was a moment in the last few years when you had The Awakening. It may have been when the waiter was describing the veal marrow with beet foam served with baby lettuces from New Zealand. It may have been when you were eating the red snapper that was cooked halfway through, like a rare steak, and you thought, “I love sushi, I love cooked fish, but I’m not sure this is really the best of both worlds.” It may have been when you saw the bill.

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“The Menu” is a black comedy, but one played close to the bone. And it is a thriller, because after a while what’s being served to the diners segues from pretentious to dangerous. Even the danger becomes a form of snobbery: This is how much the food matters . Yet the tasty joke of “The Menu” is that the food doesn’t matter at all. The food is an abstraction, an idea , all generated to fulfill some beyond-the-beyond notion of perfection that has little to do with sustenance or pleasure and everything to do with the vanity of those who are creating the food and those who are consuming it.

The latter, in this case, are an ensemble of diner victims as brimming with theatrical flaws as the characters in a “Knives Out” movie. That’s why the knives are out for them. They’re getting what they deserve just for coming to this restaurant, for buying into the dream that this is the meal they’ve earned, because that’s how cool and prosperous and elite they are.

Tyler (Nichols Hoult), a devoted foodie geek, already knows he’s going to love everything that’s served. He had brought along a date, Margot ( Anya Taylor-Joy ), who is not nearly as into it — in fact, she turns into the audience’s cynically levelheaded, ordinary-person representative who sees through all the puffery on display. Lillian (Janet McTeer), a food critic, prides herself on writing the kinds of reviews that close restaurants, so we know she’s going to get her just deserts. There’s also a trio of tech bros (Arturo Castro, Rob Yang, and Mark St. Cyr) who, between the three of them, incarnate every flavor of obnoxious. And there’s a well-liked but fading movie star, played by John Leguizamo, along with his assistant (Aimee Carrero), who’s using the dinner as a pretext to part ways with him.

“The Menu” is divided into courses, with each dish, and its ingredients, listed on screen, and for a while the movie is content to satirize the food. The first dish features foam (a tipoff that it’s not going to melt in your mouth so much as evaporate before you can enjoy it). And that’s the down-to-earth dish. Each succeeding one represents more and more of a deconstruction of food as we know it. Chef Slowik is a mad scientist of gastronomy who has reduced the very essence of cooking to a glorified lab experiment. The diners are his guinea pigs, which may be why he harbors a barely disguised contempt for them. As it turns out, the menu he has masterminded is meticulously arranged for all of them to get their just deserts, as if this were the Michelin Star version of “Saw.”  

All the actors are fun, but the two lead actors are so good they’re delicious. Ralph Fiennes plays the art chef from hell as a high fascist of snobbery, as if his mission — to make food that’s to be savored but is somehow too great to eat — were exalting him and tormenting him at the same time. And Anya Taylor-Joy, as the customer who’s got his number, cuts through it all with a sparkle that grows more and more contemptuous, as she puts together the big picture of what’s going on: that the decadent aristocratic superiority of it all is the whole point. The grand finale is bitingly funny, as Chef Slowik deconstructs the ultimate junk food — the smore, a “fucking monstrosity” that will cleanse everything with its fire. “The Menu” says that the trouble with what high-end cuisine has evolved to is that it’s grown too far apart from the low end, leaving nothing in between. No matter how divine the food is, you wind up starving.

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival, Sept. 12, 2022. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 106 MIN.

• Production: A Searchlight Pictures release of a Hyperobject Industries, Alienworx Productions production. Producers: Adam McKay, Betsy Koch, Will Ferrell. Executive producers: Michael Sledd, Seth Reiss, Will Tracy.
• Crew: Director: Mark Mytod. Screenplay: Seth Reiss, Will Tracy. Camera: Peter Deming. Editor: Christopher Tellefsen. Music: Colin Stetson.
• With: Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, Hong Chau, Janet McTeer, Judith Light, John Lequizamo, Reed Birney, Paul Adelstein, Aimee Carrero, Arturo Castro, Mark St. Cyr, Rob Yang.

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