Anya Taylor-Joy stars in the new dark comedy thriller "The Menu," produced by Adam McKay and directed by Mark Mylod. The film follows a couple, Margot and Tyler, played by Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult, on a high-end dining experience at a secluded, exclusive restaurant that takes a deadly turn. The film serves as a satirical commentary on the upper class, as it focuses on the head chef Slowik (played by Ralph Fiennes) who becomes so consumed by the cutthroat restaurant industry that he loses sight of his love for food.
Variety's chief film critic Owen Gleiberman described "The Menu" as "a black comedy, but one played close to the bone," and added that "after a while what's being served to the diners segues from pretentious to dangerous." He also noted that "even the danger becomes a form of snobbery: This is how much the food matters. Yet the tasty joke of 'The Menu' is that the food doesn't matter at all. The food is an abstraction, an idea, all generated to fulfill some beyond-the-beyond notion of perfection that has little to do with sustenance or pleasure and everything to do with the vanity of those who are creating the food and those who are consuming it."
You can stream "The Menu" on HBO Max now.
