The Anya Taylor-Joy Horror Comedy Dominating Netflix’s Top Charts

In Mark Mylod’s 2022 horror comedy “The Menu,” Anya Taylor-Joy plays Margot, a young woman who is invited to a hugely expensive meal at one of the most exclusive restaurants on the planet. The restaurant is called Hawthorn, and one can only access it by traveling by boat to a remote private island. All of the restaurant’s ingredients are grown and cultivated on the island, and the ultra-fresh food is said to be the best in the world. It is overseen by the mad culinary genius Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) who has been obsessed with food his whole life. 

Margot is taken to Hawthorn by the callow Slowik groupie Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) who is more excited to be in Slowik’s presence than he is to eat the food. It will be revealed later that Margot was a last-minute replacement after Tyler’s original date skipped out on him. She is out of her element in a place like Hawthorn, and knows nothing about the universe of high-end foodies. She is surrounded by bourgeois idiots, including movies stars, tech bros, and food critics who all talk about food in highfalutin terms. 

Over the course of a multi-course dinner at Hawthorn, it will be revealed that Slowik has developed a powerful, psychopathic hatred of his ultrarich, unappreciative clientele, and has constructed a meal that will result in guilt, horror, and death. One of the courses involves a chef dying by suicide. Another will incorporate a “Most Dangerous Game”-style human hunt. The diners will all have to face a moral reckoning as Slowik oversees the kitchen like Jigsaw by way of Jose Andres. Know that “The Menu” is presented with a winking tone, making the film into a comedic satire as much as a horror movie.

As of this writing, “The Menu” is a huge hit on Netflix, finding a new audience over two years after its release. 

“The Menu,” it should be noted, was highly praised when it was released in 2022, and was even nominated for multiple prestigious awards. Made for a budget of $30 million, “The Menu” earned $79 million at the box office, making it a modest hit. It has an 88% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 334 reviews), and many critics bodies cited it as one of the better films of the year. One might even recall that it had Oscar buzz, even though it ultimately wasn’t nominated. 

“The Menu” is, in the world of Food Network devotees and Gordon Ramsay, and incredibly timely farce. We live in a world where casual TV viewers anywhere in the world can have opinions on the best way to prepare deer flank, or how one might perfect the proper soufflé. “The Menu” seeks to divide those who eat food for pleasure from those who seem to eat certain kinds of high-end meals as an expression of class. Slowik also points out that the kinds of people who can afford to eat at his restaurants have acquired so much wealth, they have essentially obliterated their own ability to enjoy foods. Only Margot, an outsider, can see the whole experience as the farce it is. Indeed, there is a moment wherein Slowik pulls Margot aside, recognizing that she is not like the others. 

The end of “The Menu” also features one of the best-looking cheeseburgers one might ever see in a movie. Despite mocking rich foodies, one won’t be able to watch “The Menu” without wanting to try some of the foods on display. 

As usual, the unpredictable caprices of streaming have unearthed another random film that audiences are either discovering for the first time, or enjoyably revisiting. This week also saw a revival of the terrible 2006 comedy “You, Me and Dupree” and the slasher sequel “Scream VI,” so who can say where audience’s head are at?