The Menu ★★★★

Director: Mark Mylod

Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, John Leguizamo, Janet McTeer, Aimee Carrero, Arturo Castro, Hong Chau, Judith Light, Paul Adelstein, Reed Birney, Mark St. Cyr, Rob Yang 

Release: November 18, 2022 

The Menu is one most fun experiences you’ll ever have at a movie theatre. Absolutely worth seeing with a crowd, and you’re all going to have a great time! After recently screening at the Busan International Film Festival, director Mark Mylod has made a brilliant and darkly funny thriller that genre fans will love. It stars a remarkable cast of actors such as Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, Hong Chau and John Leguizamo. It has a ton of twists and turns, so it’s best to know little about the story and come into it cold. You will thank this review later.

Without revealing too much, Fiennes plays the celebrity Chef Slowik who runs an exclusive and fancy restaurant on a remote island. He heavily specializes in molecular gastronomy and always comes up with an elegant speech before serving food to his customers. For him, food is like art. Not just mindless things to eat when you’re hungry. As a group of guests is looking forward to tasting his renowned cuisine for dinner, he has special plans for them that will forever change their lives. This is the best way to vaguely summarize the premise since there are a lot of surprises waiting for you on the big screen.

For this movie to work, the cast needs to help bring this ambitious screenplay by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy to life. Everyone does a great job, but the ones you’ll remember the most are Taylor-Joy and Fiennes. These two, in particular, are amazing, and you can tell the actors are having fun on set. They all have great interactions with each other, which brings some terrific moments of tension and comedy. Whenever Fiennes talks, you’re completely invested in his character’s deranged and mysterious personality. You can’t imagine anyone else playing his role because he’s just that memorable and incredible. His dialogue delivery is quite outstanding.

The best compliment you can give to The Menu is that it’s clever. It’s a brilliant and unpredictable satire with some scenes that will make your jaw drop. You think you know where it’s going, but then it goes in a completely different direction. However, the way Mylod conveys the social commentary on wealth and class is not subtle, but that’s not necessarily bad. It makes the film very entertaining because they’re self-aware from start to finish.

The filmmakers also do a marvellous job of combining comedic, horror and thriller elements all in one, which is not easy whatsoever, which is exactly why it’s an ideal movie for genre fans. The Menu is not only incredibly entertaining but also one of the smartest, most thrilling and most hysterical films you will see this year. Fiennes and Taylor-Joy are phenomenal in their roles, and the script is filled with fun dialogue and surprises. While this review is vague, please do your best to know little about the storyline and come into it cold. You will gasp, and you will laugh. Guaranteed.