The Menu serves up dark laughs and twisty mayhem

polygon.com:

Polygon is on the ground at the 2022 Fantastic Fest, reporting on new horror, sci-fi, cult, and action movies making their way to theaters and streaming. This review was published in conjunction with the film’s Fantastic Fest premiere.

2021’s movie scene of the year — the one that dominated critic and cinephile talk during awards season — came from Michael Sarnoski’s Pig, a deliriously violent but quiet thriller about Nicolas Cage’s ex-chef chasing down his stolen truffle pig. At one point, Cage’s character, Rob, a retired chef turned backwoods recluse, sits down in a ritzy haute cuisine restaurant and summons the chef, a former employee of his. Without raising his voice, Rob verbally tears the man apart for giving up his dreams of owning an intimate, comfortable pub. “Every day, you wake up and there’ll be less of you,” Rob tells the chef, who looks gutted — but not like he disagrees. “You live your life for them, and they don’t even see you. You don’t even see yourself.”

Mark Mylod’s black, bloody comedic thriller The Menu plays out like a sequel to that scene, if the hapless high-end chef had decided to turn Rob’s revelation outward against his clientele instead of inward. The Menu mocks the kind of people who would eat at that restaurant Chef Rob despises, with its “emulsified scallops” and “foraged huckleberry foam, bathed in the smoke from Douglas fir cones.” But it also finds a little humanity in them as well. One of the most intriguing things about the movie is the way the filmmakers find room to skewer every target in sight.

Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Margot, a last-minute date for rich foodie obsessive Tyler (Nicholas Hoult), who’s secured a seating at an exclusive restaurant on a private island, headed by the