Mark Mylod’s “The Menu”

The Menu (2022)

Dark satire whose genre is probably best unknown prior to viewing offers an entertaining feast if one that’s a little light on calories

Like most movies, it’s always best to go in blind and this is no exception. The trailer does it no favours. A great trailer for this would have built up the mystery, piqued curiosity and let the word of mouth build up the hype, but alas it gives far too much away.

The film is about a dining experience at an exclusive restaurant run by chef Julian Slowik(Ralph Fiennes) situated on a small 14 acre private island. What follows feels a lot like a murder mystery as the story unfolds with each course of the meal. This structure gets increasingly intense and what we get is a delicious mix of suspense and laugh out loud humour.

Hong Chau is utterly fantastic as Elsa and delivers some terrific deadpan comedy lines. Fiennes is on form. Overall, it’s an entertaining dark satire; nothing and more and nothing less.