phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2022

The Menu



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2022
Runtime: 1h 47m
Country: USA
Language: English, Spanish
Genre Tags: Comedy, Horror, Thriller
Plot Summary: A young couple travels to a remote island to eat at an exclusive restaurant where the chef has prepared a lavish menu, with some shocking surprises.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: Skewering pretentious restaurants and the rich schmucks who dine at them. Also discusses the relationship between serving and being served, and how power dynamics always seem to favor the served, when it should be a joint affair. Darkly funny, and maybe (not so) secretly a movie about cults.


Outside Reviews:

Christy Lemire
3 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

But the build-up to what’s happening at this insanely expensive restaurant on the secluded island of Hawthorne is more intriguing than the actual payoff. The performances remain prickly, the banter deliciously snappy. And "The Menu" is always exquisite from a technical perspective. But you may find yourself feeling a bit hungry after this meal is over.


Tasha Robinson
The bloody thriller The Menu finishes the grim story that Pig started

Still, Reiss and Tracy’s willingness to implicate Chef Slowik along with his vain, surface-obsessed victims gives The Menu some startling intrigue. Like the pretentious chef Nicolas Cage calls out in Pig, Slowik engineered his own downfall and his own torment, and The Menu doesn’t let him off the hook by playing out as a straightforward eat-the-rich morality tale. The humor in this movie is mostly subtle (particularly in the hilariously wry course titles that appear on screen), but it is ultimately as much of a comedy as a horror-thriller. There’s some knuckle-biting tension as viewers wait to see how it’ll all play out, but Mylod and the writers also suggest that it’s worth chuckling a little at everyone involved, whether they’re serving up fancy versions of mayhem or just paying through the nose for it.