Saltburn (2023)

“We’re all cold blooded, haven’t you noticed?”

THE INTERNET IS DIVIDED!!!!! Saltburn is Emerald Fennell’s follow-up to her oscar-winning debut (for original screenplay) Promising Young Woman, and boy is it… something! It’s audacious/pretentious, it’s brilliant/ridiculous, it’s well crafted/a mess!! However you feel about it, you will definitely feel a lot by the time the credits roll!!! While I personally did not like this film, I do enjoy everyone’s strong reactions (good or bad). Out of all the fucked up shit I’ve watched this year, this movie did make me go WTF multiple times, and that’s not nothing, right?

In order to keep this a spoiler free review, I’ll need to keep this vague, but here are my broad issues with this movie. For a story about obsession, longing and coveting, the camera doesn’t do much in the way of lingering gazes and sexual tension. Fennell may have over-relied on the talent of her cast (Jacob Elordi, Barry Keoghan, Rosamund Pike) and the epic setting to convey this feeling, but to me it felt more like a fanfic than a fleshed out story. Why does Barry Keoghan’s Oliver lock onto Jacob Elordi’s Felix, and why does Felix open up to Oliver? These are small details that should be shown to us, but instead Fennell takes it for granted that we have these answers. I wish she’d worked more on fleshing out the power dynamics and misdirection to create a more rewarding final act, and I kinda wish it got even crazier at the end.

That said, the soundtrack is a lot of fun, there are some fantastically dramatic still shots, the actors are great (Rosamund Pike steals every scene), there’s a butler whom I enjoyed, and there’s some weird sex stuff, which was a surprising theme of many 2023 movies!!!! However, who cares what I think, I wanna see what YOU think! Good or bad, I wanna see some (respectful) fights in the comments, I’ll even allow spoilers just this one time!!