A film review by Craig J. Koban January 19, 2024

SALTBURN ½

2023, R, 131 mins.

Barry Keoghan as Oliver Quick  /  Jacob Elordi as Felix Catton  /  Rosamund Pike as Elspeth Catton  /  Richard E. Grant as Sir James Catton  /  Alison Oliver as Venetia Catton  /  Archie Madekwe as Farleigh Start  /  Carey Mulligan as Poor Dear Pamela /  Paul Rhys as Duncan  

Two years ago, Emerald Fennell won an Oscar for her screenplay for 2020's PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN (which also marked her directorial debut), and now she follows up that critically lauded effort with an equally ambitious and darkly twisted psychological thriller in SALTBURN.  

One thing that prominently stands out in both films is how she dabbles in very familiar genre conventions and gives them a fresh (and hauntingly weird) spin.  At face value, SALTBURN seems to pilfer from those types of dime-a-dozen 1990s stalker thrillers like THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE, SINGLE WHITE FEMALE, and so on, but it has so many compelling layers under the surface that helps to make it proudly stand out and firmly on its own two feet.  Fennell - with both films under her belt - has fostered a reputation for herself as a gutsy provocateur, and SALTBURN pushes buttons as both a psychological thriller and an ultra-black comedy of manners when it comes to themes of class and power.  It's unfortunate that it doesn't stick to a landing and perhaps goes on a bit too long for its own good, but overall, this is an audaciously strange and devilishly wicked sophomore film.  

On paper, Fennell sets up a premise of relative simplicity: 

A shy and lonely Oxford University student becomes fixated with another fellow and unendingly popular classmate, who ends up befriending him and later inviting him to spend a whole summer at his family's lavish country estate.  

Even if you think you know where this will all go...trust me when I say this...you really don't.  

The introvert in question is Oliver Quick (played in one of the finest performances of 2023 by the chameleon-like Barry Keoghan), who develops an obsession-at-first-sight meeting with the hunky Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), and - via his voiceover narration - he plainly tells audiences that he loves Felix...but isn't in love with him.  Felix exists in a whole other social circle echelon apart from Oliver, seeing as he's tall, handsome, rich, lives the life of the party, and can have just about any woman he wants at any time.  If there's a go-to popular alpha male at Oxford...it's this guy, and it's no wonder why the friendless and meager Oliver seems hopelessly transfixed by this Adonis-like man.     

Felix is not a one-note jerk, though.  He seems genuinely thankful when Oliver offers to lend him his bicycle after his own has blown a flat, which leads to Oliver being granted access to his his whole vast inner circle of friends.  When poor Oliver suffers from the news of a family tragedy, the good ol' sport in Felix offers him an opportunity to come back with him to his aforementioned family estate, known as "Saltburn."  Positively gleaming, Oliver jumps at the chance to join his newly anointed BFF at this palatial country home, and upon arriving he meets Sir James and Elspeth (a perfectly cast Richard E. Grant and Rosamund Pike respectively), Felix's father and mother.  Also at Saltburn is Felix's hedonistic sister, Venetia (Alison Oliver), as well as another Oxford student, Farleigh (GRAN TURISMO's fine Archie Madekwe), and - uh-huh - PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN star herself Carey Mulligan as the kooky Pamela.  Early on, Oliver tries to acclimate himself to becoming a member of the household for his extended stay, but his constant pining over Felix slowly evolves into full-blown obsession, which hints that Oliver may or may not be the type of polite and timid lad that he has been letting on.

It's hard to go into more specific plot details without tipping over into overt spoiler territory, but what I will say is that SALTBURN is thoroughly captivating when it segues to the titular estate itself and introduces us to it rich menagerie of offbeat characters that populate it.  Everything starts off so quaintly for Oliver and company, but Fennell imparts so much low-key and slow-burning suspense throughout her film that it truly becomes - the longer it progresses - squirm inducing to watch.  The more Oliver starts to submerge himself within this family and gets closer and closer to Felix, the more salacious his actions become to the point where you really have no idea what possible bleak places this film will go to with him.  And when SALTBURN goes dark...it then deep dives into midnight black depravity.  I've grown relatively numb to films that go out of their way to shock, but Fennell manages to find - shall we say - highly creative and stomach-churningly graphic ways to relay the depths of Oliver's mania with Felix.  Three separate scenes in particular just kind of...I dunno...go to places I wasn't expecting.  There's one involving bath water and a bodily fluid, another involving a woman with her period, and the other showcasing something happening to a freshly made gravesite that flips the bird at decorum.  These sequences are unimaginably disturbing, and I have to commend Fennell for having the tenacity to simply commit to them without ever looking back.   

There's quite a bit of THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY in this production as well, which Fennell has gone on record to insist (somewhat unconvincingly) is purely coincidental.  If one looks past the obvious stalker genre elements in SALTBURN, there's a strong thematic undercurrent here about the relationship between the haves and have-nots, how people are expected to behave under such social circumstances, and how those with unspeakable levels of wealth and power are often naively blind when it comes to whom they invite into their homes with welcome arms.  Obviously, class struggle is a timeless theme that's as old as fiction, but Fennell has a satiric field day honing her crosshairs on members of Felix's family.  Grant is so superb here as the soft-spoken and kind, but so utterly shallow and aloof father figure that you almost want to smack some common sense into him.  He's well flanked by Pike's equally inspired turn as his wife, a former model who has what seems like a sweet disposition, but that only flimsily masks a being of pure cruelty.  These parents also suffer from hilarious levels of tunnel vision throughout the course of Oliver's stay.  They've lived such a closed-off, guarded, and privileged life together that they're incapable of spotting evil in plain sight.

The cornerstone to all of this madness is the astoundingly unnerving performance by Keoghan, who has been gradually displaying from one film after the other that he has this innate ability to disappear into a rich diversity of roles.  I was reminded of his wonderful turn playing the proverbial village idiot in 2022's THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN, and to come off of that film and into this one that has him playing a wholly different kind of outcast is impressive, to say the least.  He not only has to encapsulate Oliver's childlike neediness in wanting to court Felix as a friend, but then is called upon to later pull a performance 180-degree turn and penetrate into his heart of darkness that shows just how one's thirst for love and belonging can morph into something monstrous.  Playing off of him is the very committed Elordi, who has his own character journey altogether as an almost godlike (at least to Oliver) aristocrat friend that allows someone into his social and family clique that he grows to learn was probably a big, big mistake.  The homoerotic tension between both men is sizable, but more or less tips towards Oliver not only wanting Felix in a sexual manner, but also literally wanting to inhabit his skin.  And, yeah, it all becomes positively skin crawling as the film lurches towards its climax.   

Still, for as potent as everything is leading up to the film's final sections and payoffs, I couldn't help think that Fennell has probably bitten more off than she can chew.  The film is already long at two-plus hours, and just when it appears that it could have a genuinely ambiguous sense of closure, Fennell makes a mistake of letting the story go on and on until it unravels into a plot twist and revelation about one character's true motives and game plan that I don't think was earned or needed (that, and it had me asking some logical questions about what transpired beforehand).  Having said all of that, I don't think that this error in creative judgment capsizes SALTBURN as a whole, mostly because of the hypnotic way that Fennell lured me into this story and, as a result, I submitted to its seductive powers.  I also forgot to mention that - on top of this film's superlative performances and perverse plot developments - Fennell has made one of the most impeccably well shot films of 2023, utilizing Oscar winning cinematographer Linus Sandgren to paint the square formatted Academy ratio screen with such opulent visuals, beautiful compositions, and bravura light play to make Saltburn both inviting and sinister in equal measure.  In the end, Fennell may have fumbled the ball in her film's hastily engineered epilogue, but on the whole, this is a beguiling piece of lurid pulp that takes familiar story threads and ideas and contorts them into some deliciously unpredictable and oftentimes surreal.     

And you'll never look at bath water spiraling down the drain the same way after seeing SALTBURN.