The Menu

Type: Movie

Score: 7.5/10

Date modified: Feb 11, 2026

After Youtube practically hounded me down to finally watch this film I finally gave in and enjoyed it, a little more than expected to be honest. I’ve heard it called a knockoff Midsommar but to be honest I didn’t really feel it. I mean, I haven’t watched Midsommar in a couple years but I don’t remember it being this overtly funny and I also remember tonally it being a lot more oppressive. Obviously The Menu is dark but I felt that due to it’s generally sarcastic tone and extremely stereotyped characters I never felt the crushing feeling I did watching Midsommar which I’m going to stop talking about for the rest of this post.

The Menu really is gut wrenchingly funny, I laughed out loud on multiple occasions. The scene between chef and Felicity was particularly funny to the point that I had to pause the movie to stop laughing afterwards (I’m terribly sorry the only clips I could find were Youtube shorts). I think had the jokes not landed so well this movie would be pretty miserable and upsetting but it managed to strike a nice balance for me between depressing and funny, as much of a balance as a film that ends with a group suicide can I suppose. It helped that all of actors played really well together, I hadn’t expected anyone to stand out as much as my goat Anya Taylor-Joy but everyone acts their asses off, aside from Anya some standouts are obviously Ralph Fiennes as the chef, John Leguizamo who is for some reason just named “Movie Star” in the credits (??) and even Nicholas Hoult who must be the goat at acting for me to have gotten as annoyed as I had with Tyler. It was quite cathartic to see him fumble around the kitchen and seeing his dish titled Tyler’s Bullshit got a chuckle too.

Aside from the acting and the writing, this movie is shot really well too. Obviously it looks good and they had good cameras but I also just really like the finishing touches they had with those like food showcase shots (the cheeseburger one is attached), it kind of made the film feel like some of those high brow cooking displays you see sometimes (which is what it’s parodying so it’s a good idea). The sound of this film is also kind of great, the way the chefs all move robotically in sync with one-another when the chef orders, all replying in sync, really fit the cold, lifeless vibe they were going for in the kitchen and the cooking. The music in this film is great too and always elevates the scenes it’s in. The best songs in the soundtrack remind me of Sigur Rós at their best and when everything comes together its brilliant. There are a couple of these moments but the one I’d like to talk about is the cheeseburger scene which I’ve mentioned a couple times already because it’s just so good. The way Margot does the iconic chef clap, the music all swelling as the chef, the only one in the kitchen, looks genuinely happy to be making a burger, the way this scene has the actual process dutifully shot in the way only finished dishes had been before. It’s a scene that stuck with me in a way most entire films don’t.

Despite me basically only showing praise up to this point, I did have some problems with The Menu. The main one and only one I’ll talk about because omg I’ve been writing for 30 minutes, is that while the characters being almost caricatures helps lighten the mood and makes it easier to make social commentary, it also makes it hard to get super invested in them as real people which kind of made any sort of commentary this film made feel a little undercut. Honestly maybe I should’ve scored this higher, maybe I will later but I’m feeling sleepy so I’m going to worry more about that right now, night night Vietnam.