The Menu (2022)

What is the Storyline of The Menu?

Wealthy foodie Tyler Ledford and his girlfriend Margot are invited to attend an exclusive dinner by celebrity chef Julian Slowik. They travel to Slowik’s private island alongside an assortment of food critics, magazine editors, and movie stars, but soon discover that the chef has more than just a sophisticated meal in mind. As a series of uncomfortable truths is revealed, the guests start to wonder if any of them will be alive by the time the last course is served.

Our Honest Review of The Menu

The best way to enjoy The Menu is to know as little about it as possible. The twists and turns of the plot are genuinely surprising, so we’d recommend watching it before reading any further, although you’re definitely going to need a strong stomach.

What we can tell you is that this film is like the more intense cousin of Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion. It involves a small group of preposterously rich people and is set entirely on a private island, where all their back-stabbing self-importance comes to the fore. Unlike Glass Onion though, there’s no smooth-talking Benoit Blanc to keep the mood jovial, and instead there are escalating scenes of unpleasantness.

The end result is a sticky, gory film that’s equal parts comedy and high tension horror. Ralph Fiennes is on fiendish form as a celebrity chef with delusions of grandeur, while Anya Taylor-Joy’s performance as a society girl who proves to be his match is another feather in her cap. It might leave a bad aftertaste and we’re not sure if we’ll be going back for seconds, but for the most part it’s very satisfying.

What Do the Critics Think of The Menu?

The Menu received generally positive reviews, with Ralph Fiennes receiving high praise for his performance as celebrity chef Anton Slowik. Cinema attendees polled by PostTrak also showed support for the film, giving it an average grade of ‘B’ on an A+ to F scale.

• “Slowik’s slow-cooked revenge against social inequality, bad taste, cruel critique, culinary pretension and even ‘fast food’ cinema is unsettling and accusatory.” – Anton Biel, Sight & Sound

• “The marvelous, multitalented Ralph Fiennes is the best thing on the menu in this clever culinary delight.” – Thelma Addams, AARP Movies For Grownups

• “Subtle it’s not, but it’s maliciously entertaining. It turns out that revenge on the ultra-wealthy is a dish best seared over a naked flame.” – Wendy Ide, The Observer

• “To ding this for not completely sticking the landing — from going from fulfilling to simply filling — is to ignore so much of what this straight-outta-Jacobean-theatre chamber piece does right.” – David Fear, Rolling Stone

What Awards and Nominations Did The Menu Receive?

The Menu was nominated for a wide variety of awards, including: 

• Best Actor In A Horror Movie for Ralph Fiennes, by The Critics Choice Super Awards (won)
• Best Actor and Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy for Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy, respectively,, at the Golden Globe Awards
• Best Original Screenplay for Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, at The Writers Guild Of America Awards
• Best Ensemble Cast, at The Portland Critics Association 
• Best Screenplay for Seth Reiss and Will Tracy, at the Fangoria Chainsaw Awards

Director and Cast of The Menu

Fun Facts About The Menu

• Writer Will Tracy first got the idea for the script whilst on his honeymoon in Norway. He and his wife visited a restaurant on a private island, and the realisation that he was trapped there until the meal was done inspired him to write the movie.

• The food layouts were created by the celebrated French chef Dominique Crenn, who owns the Atelier Crenn restaurant in San Diego. Despite their appetising looks, they are mostly inedible props, and cast and crew had to be repeatedly reminded not to taste them between takes. The only real item of food is a burger that Anya Taylor-Joy eats in one scene. 

• Hong Chau’s dedication and skill at food prep impressed Dominique Crenn so much that she offered her a job. 

• The film features a wide range of delicacies, but director Mark Mylod has admitted to not being a fan of fine dining. His favourite food is traditional British fish and chips. 

Themes of The Menu

The Menu has similar themes to films like Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and Triangle Of Sadness (both 2022), in that it casts a cynical eye over the upper classes and exposes how vapid their lifestyles are. The patrons of Chef Slowik’s restaurant are cruel and shallow people, obsessed with their wealth and status. As the torturous evening unfolds, they become increasingly willing to betray one another.

Chef Slowik himself represents the cult of celebrity and how fame has all but mythologised him. He is a brilliant chef, but he is also deeply troubled and his actions in setting up the dinner are revealed to be petty and self important. His creativity has been both rewarded and punished by a consumerist society, and his worth is linked directly to his skill as a chef. In this respect, the film incorporates ideas about the commodification of art under a capitalist system.

How Does The Menu Compare to Mark Mylod’s Other Work?

The Menu is the best-reviewed film of Mark Mylod’s career. His previous directing credits are for Ali G Indahouse (2002), The Big White (2005), and What’s Your Number (2011), but these do not share many thematic similarities.

All of them have elements of humour and two are outright comedies, but The Menu is the darkest and most satirical. The Menu cast members have not previously worked with the director, but they collaborate well and put in consistently good performances.

The closest comparison point would be his work on the TV series Succession. Like The Menu, Succession portrayed members of the rich upper class as foolish and self-centred, and shared a similar style of humour. However, it didn’t venture as far into horror.

Iconic Scenes from 28 Weeks Later

Behind-the-Scenes Trivia

• Being surrounded by prop food resulted in the cast and crew feeling consistently hungry during filming. This eventually got the better of actor John Legiuzamo and he ordered burgers and fries from Five Guys for the entire team.

• Due to the nature of the film, the actors playing diners remained on set for lengthy periods and were expected to improvise in the background. Nicholas Hoult and Anya Taylor-Joy spent the time telling one another stories from their personal lives, but with fictional elements blended in and guessing which parts were true. 

• John Leguizamo plays a washed-up movie star and claims that he based his performance on Steven Seagal, who he met while filming Executive Decision (1996). He described Seagal as “kind of a horrible person.” 

What’s the Soundtrack Like for The Menu?

The soundtrack to The Menu was composed by Colin Stetson, a musician whose previous work includes the scores for Hereditary (2018) and The Color Out Of Space (2020). Like the film it’s based on, it’s an intense and occasionally unsettling experience, but it’s also a lot of fun. 

Stetson has collaborated with several rock bands throughout his career and you can catch glimpses of that in this soundtrack. It’s a lively collection of instrumentals, with piano strings and arpeggiated saxophones creating a discordant, anxiety-inducing experience. You can almost feel the increasing unease of Chef Slowik’s dinner guests as the soundtrack develops. It’s not quite as good as what Stetson composed for Hereditary, but it is impressive all the same. If you’re after an immersive soundtrack to a horror movie, The Menu does a grand job.

We’d advise against playing it at a dinner party, though, unless your guests are all cinephiles with a taste for the macabre.

Best Quotes from The Menu

• “Over the next few hours you will ingest fat, salt, sugar, protein, bacteria, fungi, various plants and animals, and, at times, entire ecosystems. But I have to beg of you one thing. It’s just one. Do not eat. Taste. Savor. Relish. Consider every morsel that you place inside your mouth. Be mindful. But do not eat. Our menu is too precious for that. And look around you. Here we are on this island. Accept. Accept all of it. And forgive. And on that note… food!” – Chef Slowik welcomes the diners to dinner.

• “Come on, Chef. I thought tonight was a night of hard home truths. This is one of them. You cook with obsession, not love. Even your hot dishes are cold. You’re a chef. Your single purpose on this Earth is to serve people food that they might actually like, and you have failed. You’ve failed. And you’ve bored me. And the worst part is I’m still fucking hungry.” – Margot, during a confrontation with Chef Slowik

• “Come on, Chef. I thought tonight was a night of hard home truths. This is one of them. You cook with obsession, not love. Even your hot dishes are cold. You’re a chef. Your single purpose on this Earth is to serve people food that they might actually like, and you have failed. You’ve failed. And you’ve bored me. And the worst part is I’m still fucking hungry.” – Margot, during a confrontation with Chef Slowik

• “This is my mother. As you can see, she’s rather drunk. This is not unusual. When I was seven years old, one Tuesday, my father came home quite drunk. Really drunk. Also, not unusual. My mother grew angry and screamed at him, at which point, he proceeded to wrap a telephone cord around her neck and pull it tight. I wept. I screamed, I begged him to stop. To make him stop, I finally had to stab him in the thigh with kitchen scissors. You remember that, Mother, don’t you? Now, I suppose I should’ve stabbed him in the throat that evening. But we’re not so smart when we’re young. It was, as you can imagine, a very memorable taco night.” – Chef Slowik introduces a fresh course.

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