[imagesource: Eric Zachanowich/Searchlight Pictures]

Described as a “viciously delicious dark comedy”, Mark Mylod’s new food-themed thriller puts an assortment of plutocrats, insufferable tech bros, haughty editors, and foamy-mouthed critics on the revenge menu.

Rich, entitled, rude, self-satisfied people have been at the heart of a few watchables this year (Succession, The White Lotus, Triangle of Sadness), as well as shows about the gruelling restaurant business (Pig, Bear, Boiling Point), which The Menu combines with delicate precision.

Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Margot, a last-minute date for rich foodie obsessive Tyler (Nicholas Hoult). He’s secured a seating at an exclusive restaurant on a private island, headed by the renowned Chef Slowik (“played with malicious delight” by Ralph Fiennes).

The chef’s cultish crew of kitchen slaves work to bring the upper .01% of the restaurant world an extravagant fine-dining experience, but little do they know, each course reveals their secrets until the full revenge plot is played out:

Vulture sets the scene:

The Menu unfolds the way all great meals do, course by course (including specials like “Tyler’s Bullshit”), and the filmmakers enlisted a team of real-life professionals, including San Francisco chef Dominique Crenn and food stylist Kendall Gensler, to consult on Hawthorne’s parade of overwrought foams and preciously rendered ingredients.

In that article, Chris Crowley and former New York restaurant critic Adam Platt chat about what The Menu gets right about the world of very fine dining, which is mostly an understanding that it is all rather like a cult.

Polygon continues:

[Fiennes] directs the action at his restaurant like a cult leader, puts on a warm, benevolent face when it suits the story, then brings a ruthless form of cold psychopathy to the table for other scenes.

Trying to guess what’s under his surface is one of the movie’s bigger challenges, and one of its biggest joys, mostly because he’s scripted and performed as a villain with a few sympathetic wrinkles, a man who courts empathy and evokes horror at the same time.

The teaser trailer covers more:

You’re now one trailer away from having seen the whole movie.

The Menu is running in theatres now. Eat before you enter because the meals look scanty if not totally terrifying.

[sources:vulture&polygon]