The Menu

Written by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, Directed by Mark Mylod is this dark comedy set in the world of exclusive fine dining. Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) and Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) are heading off to an dinner at the exclusive island based restaurant of renowned Chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) Hawthorne. An exclusive and expensive eating “experience” which attracts food critics, foodies, the wealthy with money to burn and celebrities. But to this special evening the guests are by invite, except Margot, who Tyler has employed as his date for the evening. An invite she soon regrets when Chef Slowick’s menu turns into an eating experience nobody expects.

The Menu is quite the culinary ride full of dark turns as the evening becomes ever more vengeful. It’s a dark satirical comedy a mix of MasterChef meets The Purge. It takes aim at overly pretentious food, food criticism, experience junkies and style over substance. All of these irritations fall in the vengeful sights of a chef disheartened with his craft and the life it has given him.

The film is built on the performances of the always flawless Anya Taylor-Joy and Ralph Fiennes channeling his best Hannibal Lecter. Both bring a darkness that never falls into caricature.

The social commentary can be biting, the premise entertaining and the comedy deliciously dark. But the film doesn’t fully work for me. While we have a fine ensemble cast which includes Hoult, John Leguizamo and Hong Chau. None of their characters have any depth, other than their obvious unpleasantness, which ultimately means I didn’t really care about them as the film moved towards its conclusion and this lessened its impact.

The Menu is a deliciously dark poking fun at obvious unpleasant targets. But it doesn’t fully hit the mark as beyond Fiennes and Taylor-Joy’s characters, the rest are paper thin and you fail to care for them and their ultimate end lessening its impact. That said still lots of fun to be had.