Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Fiennes, Nicholas Hoult, Janet McTeer

Directed by Mark Mylod

Searchlight, in cinemas now

When Margot realises she is Tyler’s last-minute plus-one for his night at an exclusive restaurant, she discovers that there is a lot more than food on The Menu.

On the rare occasion I have been lucky enough to be replete with disposable income, one of my favourite ways of – literally – flushing it down the toilet is to spend it on fine dining of the Michelin starred variety. The more pretentious the concept, the more theatrical the presentation, the more unintelligible the sommelier’s bizarre narrative about the origins of the wine (‘these grapes come from a south-west facing slope and are urinated upon by a rare breed of Latvian goat’), the more fun I have; and if the grub tastes good then that’s a bonus too.

Consequently, The Menu, an acrid satirical horror fable, about aspiring fine-diners (just like me) encountering a Nietzschean chef, to enjoy – or not enjoy – a last supper of sorts, is 100 minutes of cinematic yumminess.

Horror has a long tradition of exploring the zeitgeist but I think we’re in something of a golden age of this more political use of the genre. In The Menu, as with the recent Triangle of Sadness, we are exploring the pretention and hypocrisy of the super-rich and pseudo-rich, with food as a metaphor for mortality, the ephemeral and the transient nature of existence, not to mention the pointlessness of art itself. It also has a good old dig at overly verbose critics (see preceding paragraphs).

The problem with hanging your social satire on the horror milieu, is that you need to get the horror right. Mostly, writers Will Tracy and Seth Reiss make the fusion work to good effect. There is a witty, unbearable tension at times; the movie structured into increasingly disturbing ‘courses’ rather than dramatic acts. Director Mark Mylod milks this for all its worth, casting the ritualism of the restaurant as a not so distant relative of the ritualism of horror itself.

Fiennes, Taylor-Joy, Hoult and McTeer all bring their A-game to the table (so to speak), but there is an immaculate ensemble feel to the whole cast, who treat the enterprise with deadly seriousness, whilst also, one senses, having a lot of fun.

There are a few too many loose ends for this to warrant a perfect ten. Why is there a knife the place where she finds a knife? Why doesn’t anyone notice that a certain prominent character has gone missing? Why is there a completely duplicate thingamajig? And the manhunt – what on earth is that about? As for the philosophising, it could be argued that The Menu plays out as little more than a horror re-working of Ratatouille, albeit without animated rodents, and with added slash and splatter.

But I love Ratatouille, and the sign of a film that is better than the sum of its parts is that I didn’t dwell on these numerous plot-holes until after the movie had finished.

Verdict: The Menu is hugely enjoyable, and meticulously executed. It is never dull, full of efficiently scary expectation, and if the satire is ultimately on the disposable side, perhaps that’s the point, as the very last shot implies. 8/10

Martin Jameson