Margot (Anya Taylor Joy) and Tyler (Nicholas Holt) arrive on a dock waiting for a boat to take them to a secluded island, where the famous and exclusive restaurant Hawthorn and its highly respected chef Slowick ( Ralph Fiennes ) live. Gradually the guests arrive and board. Its a mix of wealthy regular patrons. a famous food critic and her editor, Slowick's financiers, a film star, and Slowik's Mum. Margot is Tyler's last minute change of accompanying guest, which the maitre'd Elsa ( Hong Chao) notes with evident irritation. Its obvious they've all been handpicked to be here, for what, becomes evident later as the evenings meal commences.
The mis-en-scene of The Menu is necessarily tightly controlled and confined largely to the dining area and kitchen alongside. It is then, quite stagey and theatrical in its set pieces. The movie's denouement becoming clearly inevitable once one of the kitchen staff shoots themselves in front of the guests.Was this a well set up and executed performance, or was this all too real? No one is initially sure, so rattled, but not yet in outright rebellion, the guests resume their seats and continue to eat the meal. Margot, as the one unexpected guest, is the only one who is clear this is not OK, regardless of whether what has happened is real or not. For Chef Slowik wishes to torture, punish and murder them all for the various things they have done that has offended him. Only Margot does not fit into this, because she was not planned for, so she must decide her own fate.
The conceit of The Menu works well, for the first half of the movie. With some clever, if easy shots being taken at the pretentiousness of the whole outrageous celebrity chef shtick But once the carnage ensues the predictability of its conclusion does sort of diminish its impact and engagement. It becomes merely a question of following an unveiling procedure, of how they are all going to cop it. Its evident script flaws are substantially compensated by watching the creepy consistency of Fienne's calmly emollient performance. Anya Taylor Joy is excellent as the only ordinary person, who represents us watching, seeing through the pretense of the kings new clothes. And how all the other guests are so bought into the mythology of this particular celebrity chef, they are initially unable to see what is actually going on.
With sterling support from substantial actors of the caliber of Janet McTeer and John Leguizamo, this film has a lot going for it. And on the whole it does not disappoint, even if the narrative journey it is taking us on has a certain predictability to it. Billed as a horror/comedy it has flashes of doing both extremely well, but it is intermittent. Dramatically its broadly a quietly effective satire in its first half and is a moderately horrific one in the second. It really needed to commit to being primarily a satire or a horror movie. In the end it was only quite good at being a bit of both.
CARROT REVIEW - 5/8
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