SummaryStruggling to find his place at Oxford University, student Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) finds himself drawn into the world of the charming and aristocratic Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), who invites him to Saltburn, his eccentric family’s sprawling estate.
SummaryStruggling to find his place at Oxford University, student Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) finds himself drawn into the world of the charming and aristocratic Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), who invites him to Saltburn, his eccentric family’s sprawling estate.
Fennell has a sharp eye for outrage, and an even sharper one for hotness, crafting any number of scenarios and images here that may elicit sotto voce phwoars against your better judgement.
Fennell has captured something real about these unreal people and the world they live in. Her film slices with a scalpel, peels back the layers and finds only hollowness beneath. Maybe that’s the real twist.
Saltburn is sleek, stylish movie with mendacious performances and charm. It's weird, uncomfortable and funny, and even though I think a movie like this is likely to infuriate some audience members, it's simply too interesting to skip.
The depravity on display, the things that make many in the audience **** with adolescent glee, are wildly romantic and caustic at the same time. I don’t think many appreciate the satire and subliminal currents here. It’s not as immediately pungent as Fennell’s ‘Promising Young Woman’ but by no means is it a lesser effort. I found it fascinating and intriguing and more, wildly entertaining. Keoghan & Pike are fantastic.
Come for the class warfare and the occasional shots-fired zingers about the rich being different than you and me. Stay for Keoghan twirling in circles, with nothing but shafts of late afternoon light and the entirety of what God gave him expressing the bliss of going from pretender to predator.
It’s steamy and transgressive in a straightforward way, an in-your-face bacchanal of sex and violence of the kind Fennell so delights in depicting. But as the film barrels toward its bonkers but highly predictable twist, the shine on Saltburn begins to fade.
Be it sexuality, gender, class, age, or race, there’s scarcely a hot-button issue of identity that Emerald Fennell won’t invoke to amplify the stakes of an obvious metaphor.
Saltburn is a remarkable combination of smart and stupid. Its problem is that it’s superficially smart and deeply stupid. It’s clever and amusing in 20 different ways, but when it really matters, it descends into ridiculousness.
Coming into this, all I knew of Emerald Fennel was her work on Killing Eve’s second season, which I found pleasantly sharp and surprisingly dark. She seems to have dialed up her eccentric, picturesque love of the macabre to a whole other scale for ‘Saltburn.’ For only her second feature film, it’s remarkably confident in what its showing, growing bolder and bolder by the scene. The start and end of the movie feel like two entirely separate entities. But the progression feels very organic, or as organic as you can get in an insane bats**t Fennel screenplay. The weaving of one genre tone to the other should feel jarring given how satirical this movie gets at times, but it pulls you back in with another emotional gut tug. By the end, if you’re not too emotionally whipped by this British middle-class beast, it may be worth thinking if Fennel has a second Oscar nom on the horizon. I certainly won’t be complaining.
There’s **** movie in here but the plot and character development needs work. It’s basically a weak ripoff of the talented mr ripley. Not much interesting going on but the shots are good and some scenes will inadvertently make you wonder a little bit
Wow... Get ready for one wild ride with this one. A seemingly lower class and awkward young Oxford student named Oliver (Barry Keoghan) finds himself befriending a privileged and wealthy fellow student named Felix (Jacob Elordi), who takes him under his wing and invites him to his family's sprawling estate during summer break. From there, wild parties and debauchery ensue as Oliver starts acting increasingly disturbed, deranged, and attached to Felix's family. Written and directed by Emerald Fennell (who won an Oscar for her screenplay with her 2020 directorial debut 'Promising Young Woman'), this is a film that was absolutely full of twists, turns, and equally shocking and sickening moments throughout. I genuinely had no idea where things would lead or might happen next throughout the whole thing, but unfortunately this couldn't quite make up for the overall sleaziness of it all, as I found myself more often than not feeling like I needed a shower after watching several scenes, which says a lot for me. Furthermore, it felt as though the film was simply borrowing too heavily from earlier and more superior films. There's very much a heavy vibe of both 'The Talented Mr. Ripley' and 'Parasite' sprinkled throughout, both of which did their job better than this film did in my opinion. The biggest highlight I can give this film by far is Keoghan's scarily-convincing sociopathic lead turn here. He completely throws himself into his unhinged character and turns in one of the most demented onscreen performances I've seen in quite some time. For those familiar with his unsettling supporting performance in 'The Killing of a Sacred Deer', trust me when I say that you ain't seen nothing from him yet until you've watched him in this. There's a VERY good reason Matt Reeves cast him as the new Joker in his upcoming Batman sequel FYI. Aside from him, Elordi plays his usual charming and boyish jock self here to great effect, and other supporting players, such as Rosemund Pike and Richard E. Grant also deliver. Overall, for better or worse, I was left heavily shaken and totally disturbed by the end of this one. It's full of surprises, sleazy as hell, and led by an absolutely phenomenal and unsettling Keoghan. It's a film that will haunt me for the foreseeable future, but left me feeling admittedly rather icky, and isn't necessarily one I'd want to revisit.
Does what other movies have done before it better. Not much happens and you don't end up caring about anyone. The shock factor also wasn't worth it/good and the ending was terrible.