What "The Menu" Got Wrong
and how it could learn from Promising Young Woman
I recently finished watching The Menu, a 2022 horror comedy currently streaming on Netflix (spoilers ahead). I loved the film: the characters were dramatic and funny, the color grading was on point, and the general vibe reminded me of my own time working in a kitchen. While I didn’t experience any murderous plots or crazy celebrity, the intensity of work and brutal hours were still familiar. While this was a compelling watch I would encourage anyone to see (if they can stomach some on-screen violence), I think the movie’s dramatic ending undercut the class critique it offered. The balancing act between witty art pieces and critical media often falls short when entertainment overshadows any serious message by overdramatizing progressive attitudes and conflating them with the individual acts of a crazy person.
In short (MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD) the central plot of the story involved a group of elite celebrities who would be killed off during an elaborate tasting menu. The prestigious chef Slowik was compelled by class consciousness and decades of seeing his aspiration towards culinary perfection slowly destroy his craft and love of cooking. The diners, or eaters, are framed as takers who prey upon his genius and leverage it for personal clout: celebrities pretend to know him and restaurant critics attribute his fame to their reviews. Margot, the film’s protagonist and person whose presence there was an accident, reveals Slowik’s fans as vampires that suck the joy, meaning, and love out of his food. The cheeseburger she orders is a stand-in for his return to the joyful art of nurturing the proletariat with his food. In the end he lets Margot pay for her cheeseburger and leave while the rest of the restaurant, staff and guests, stay to die.
I did genuinely enjoy the movie. However, the highly dramatic plot and explosive ending replaces some of the social critique with feelings of awe, horror, and surprise. The aestheticized killing left me thinking more about what the fuck is going on than why Slowick was driven to murder. Margot's speech fell away from my conscious and, while I am sure the astute film viewer may chat with friends about the movie for a while, Slowik’s actions can easily be attributed to the extremist action of a madman. I think a lot of media walks this line conservatively, and I am sure that pressure from the business of film and initial audiences buying movies and TV shows aren't particularly champing at the bit to run media critiquing the ultra-wealthy creative elites destroying artistic practices in western society.
Promising Young Woman is a similar movie with an explosive ending (spoilers ahead, again). However, the film better balanced the shock and violent ending without abandoning an overarching message and emotional stake in the protagonist. The movie follows Cassie, a med school drop-out seeking revenge against date rapists at bars who try to take her home when she is apparently too drunk to consent. She reconnects with a former classmate and potential love interest, but a shocking revelation reignites her pursuit for justice that ends with her corpse left in a field to rot. While the “bad guys” are caught in the end, Cassie’s death underscores larger conversations about rape culture, larger complicity in it, and the devastating effect of sexual assault has on those who endure it. Promising Young Woman is fun, thrilling, and witty while still leaving the viewer thinking about the larger implications of rape culture in America.
I was a bit disappointed that The Menu did not carry the same class critique it alluded to throughout the film into the finale in a meaningful way. When reflecting back on my own creative process I can find several projects where I began with something to say, but found I lost the message while constantly reworking the work. Perhaps this was it? Slowick did make a speech revealing his frustration, and did call out the celebrity cast of characters for being the vultures they are, but the over aestheticized killing seemed to shoehorn in a class critique as a post rationalization to neatly explain “why” Slowick was doing this and, more importantly, why the studio could produce this imagery. Again, I was left a more intrigued by the s’mores imagery than I was left seriously thinking about the implications of a wealthy elite’s influence in art taste and preferences. Was this the initial message of the film, or was it added in afterwards?
I could be unjustly comparing the two movies, placing more emotional gravity in Promising Young Woman or expecting too much from The Menu. However, I cannot escape the feeling that Promising Young Woman left me seriously thinking about my own role in rape culture in America, while The Menu left me hungry for more of…anything? I recommend both movies and would love to hear your thoughts on either!