The Menu - Review (Spoilers)

The Menu - Review (Spoilers) 

Originally written in February 2023. 

A nice beginning

The highlight of the experience for me was in the first half. The directing is nice, the dialogue flows well and the actors in charge of selling it do exactly that, though maybe not much else. This certainly feels like a professionally made and well put together film, as if from an experienced crew that has figured what they are supposed to be doing. You can tell theres lots of talent in the technical departaments:

The score sounded pretty nice, though it was very present at all times. And with this partially a movie about food, its cool to see them do things with the presentation that convey a passion for this subject. At times it was almost as if I was watching a cooking documentary.

And unlike with so many other horror films, the set-up part here is very enjoyable. 

You know how in most horror movies for around the first 30 minutes you are just sitting there unengaged wishing the characters would just shut up and the story would just "get to it"? Well Im glad there was enough talent behind this film to make that not be the case. 

From set up of our two main characters, to the introduction to the films real beef, Is all something i would wish other screen writters would learn from, its quite fast paced, it wastes no time and gets straight to the point, it tells us everything we need at that point while leaving some intrigue to be filled in as the movie goes along. It truly made me wish other horror films didnt mess up so often, because it showed me how much i was enjoying myself during this part. 

Things were always happening and moving along, always presenting the audience with new information to chew on.

It truly feels like there was no filler to speak of. Something specially good for the setup part in a horror movie, as it already makes it stand out from about the other 70% movies in the genre because of how boring those parts tend to be. Though yes, if we look at it from a certain light, its something whose specialness depends upon others' incopency. 

Story

Maybe you sniffed it out by now, if i enlist a bunch of technical elemment praise, that likely is gonna mean the film has deficiencies in the content departament. That sure is the case for The Menu. 

For all its talent, Its a horror movie that did not prevented itself from finding its substance in mixmash of well known and well used tropes and cliches from all over the landscape

For all well written i tought the opening scene was, the relationship of the two main characters, almost meta-ironically, decays into a two-dimensional decaying gimmick we've seen before a zillion times: Guy is a massive nerd about something (in this case, the food, duh) and the girl couldn't care less about it and becomes increasingly annoyed, yet the guy is oblivious to her social cues despite her not even trying to hide them. And i must say, i dont think the main lead actor works being casted as a guy who is a total nerd about something, i was having a bit trouble buying his performance. He certainty was annoying, but with how familiar this tropes is, i fail to see how having this as his character made the movie any better. 

All of this culminates into another well known cliche, trope or whatever: X person tells a menacing force to, in a betraying, cowardly way, give the bad outcome to Y person. The menace force agrees, X person is relieved after being seemingly saved, only for them to end up being the ones who get the bad outcome, punished by their cowardice. 

Another overly familiar trope we had at play was the whole scheme of going into a seemingly perfect environment run by ultra-civilized people, only for it to slowly turn out to be a creepy death cult with extreme dedicating to their cause. It was around this point where i wished instead i was watching something that tried this exact thing but pulled it off much better, like Midsommar. 

The film was slowly losing its momentum as it exanged its high efficiency for these familiar movie-isms. It also became considerably more of a subpar and obvious horror movie experience. For a big chunk the film became this thing of OMG aren't these chefs so totally creepy? OMG aren't they so eccentric and weird? OMG they just freaked everyone out! Everyone its so totally freaked out! They are so creepy! 

It was desesperately relying on getting a reaction from the audience to be effective. It was obvious that shit was gonna go down and get blood at any point, and i wishing for that moment to come soon. 

One more of the unique things the movie offers is… Being a wealthy people scare lesson. This is where the momentum stops definitely to never come back. 

The film decides to linger on what felt like each of the separate groups of visitors in this cruise. It was arguably to give them more depth and make them not feel two dimensional, tough it stayed more on the attempt. it was still a bit steretypical, most of them were douchebag type caricatures, and i honestly didnt gave a damn about any of them, they were not interesting or watchable. Tough again, these are rich people, there was not much they could do. 

There was one chance tough, to make one of them be interesting and the film completely missed it. Im talking about the actor celebrity guy, played by John Leguízano. Other characters adressed him as an actor and didnt say his name so I assumed he was playing himself… but turns out he wasnt it was some fictional celebrity. And i was very let down. Missed oportunity to canonically kill John Leguizamo in the film's universe.

This is a film that feels like its ripping of several things at the time. It kinda wants to be Midsommar, it wants to be A Christmas Carol and also it wants to be Saw and The Hunger Games for some reason? Im guessing that was the idea that surfaced up in the writers room when they were discussing where they were gonna take the horror-food concept to. Hes like a normal chef, but Jigsaw! And instead of serving them food, he serves them scary food that functions as a poetic punishment for something they did previously! and then he places the characters in potentially lethal tests where they have to compete for their survival like in the hunger games!

Honestly the entertainment that came out of this was nothing amazing in any way, but with how awful most films in the Escape-Room genre tend to be, this may look like a masterpiece to some. Also at around this point they do the cliche of a character watching a wall full of old papers and they're like OMG now everything makes sense! 

When the time for pay offs came out and shit actually went down it became  more engaging, the backstories and payoffs they came up with may not be the most original things ever but i find it always entertaining to see a good emotional breakdown scene. 

And if there was ever a point where the filmmaking technique should have really shown, it was in the bloody scenes, but somehow it didn't. The way the gore was shot and the reactions did not really worked for me. The cheating techniques used were noticeably fake and obvious. All i could see was an actor screaming at a prop covered in fake blood. And everything from the cheese burger to the ending was such a cheesefest i almost couldnt take it. Also, not to spoil things further but lets just say that at this point there is a bunch of CGI fire, and yeah it really looks like shit.

Conclusion

It's a decently shot movie with several competent talents participating, mostly quick and to the point but with not not much of a real cathartic material to take its premise through. In the end, too much movie-isms is what prevents the events presented to feel plausible and become an all the more thrilling experience. 

The violence and sociopathic behaviour are cardboard cut. In the end its closer to being another more slasher movie, than the artistically presented thriller set in a grounded reality it wanted to be. 

Its characterization of human cynism and the ways i presents it; such as in the form of the our main characters turning out to be nothing more than an escort and her client, the assholeness of the other guests and of course the evil chef cult is all conceived and presented in a very subpar way. This film never quite gets rid of that worry that it's a movie and has an audience to entertain. It wants to explore and ask questions about the human condition and its extents, but it does so trough a very sensationalized and movie-like lense. Its the movie that you would get from people who understand movies more than they do people. 

6.5/10

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