Who doesn’t love a good polarising movie? The Internet certainly does. Just look up reviews for The Last Jedi, The Lighthouse or even Napoleon Dynamite and you’ll have a whale of a time digging through the rages pitched in defence or denial of each of these movies’ respective (and continuously debatable) genius. If such online hot air is anything to go by, Saltburn, the latest offering from Promising Young Woman creator Emerald Fennell, also appears to have slipped into this category. After a limited theatrical release in the States brought rave reviews last year, greater scrutiny through a release on streaming networks has since tempered the early positivity. So how does this dark comedic psych-horror truly fare? Is it an audio-visual tour de force? A vicious satire on social aspiration? Or just a hollow diatribe on our fascination with upper-class decadence that winds up as vapid as the society it claims to criticise? The answer, anticlimactic as it may be, is none of these. Which doesn’t mean we’re left with a movie that isn’t worth watching - just one that, when all is said and done, isn’t the smart artistic statement on class cannibalism that it’s clearly trying to be. 

Essentially, Saltburn is a very slow burn on a very dark twist - one that is hinted at with Oliver reflecting on his times at the Saltburn estate in the film’s opening, and eventually delivered through the binding of the pair’s unlikely friendship. At the beginning, Oliver is painted as an awkward underdog - new at Oxford, but almost immediately abandoned by the rest of the better-bred first-year students for his inability to socialise upwards. But an opportune meeting with fellow student Felix, grants him a step up the ladder. Elordi plays Felix as the model male student of any Russell Group university - athletic, articulate, good-looking and chipper in that quintessential British public school way. Felix is also open-hearted and rather naive, which, in a thinly-veiled metaphor for the sentimental nature of upper-class charity, is probably one of the reasons why he takes to Oliver - especially when Oliver confides in him on issues with his home life, involving his parents’ substance abuse and mental health. 

Seemingly as a gesture of sympathy, Felix takes the initiative to welcome him into his Oxford social group, with all the pub sessions, vomitous drunken parties and privileged debauchery that allows. Not all of Felix’s circle take to him, least of all Farleigh (Archie Madekwe), Felix’s cousin and fellow Oxford student who, previously seen earlier in the movie disparaging Oliver for his lack of dress sense and etiquette, is wondering how on earth he’s now at the same parties as him. But no amount of suspicion appears to shake Felix’s besottedness with his new best mate. As Oliver further opens up to him on the news of the recent death of his father, it only serves to play on his compassion all the more, and he makes the decision to invite him to his family estate for the summer in a bid to help him get over his tragic loss.

It’s only once the estate of Saltburn becomes the backdrop for the film - in all of its baroque, secluded, perfectly-lawned glory - that its story begins its turn to the perversely weird. Regardless, viewers uninclined to give the benefit of the doubt might already have tweaked that Oliver himself is already a bit peculiar. He’s flatly charmless in an unnerving sort of way - a trait that nobody else on screen appears to have picked up on yet. Nonetheless, his unusualness pales in comparison to the Cattons themselves on his first encounter with them. Individually, the Cattons are so typical of various English upper-class eccentric stereotypes that they might as well have been cut right out of a Hello! Magazine exposé. Sir James Catton (Richard E. Grant), Felix’s father and the head of the house, represents your regular affable but soft-headed British male aristocrat. His wife and Felix’s mother, Lady Elspeth (Rosamund Pike), is a former model from the height of the Britpop craze with plenty of anecdotes to divulge on her partying past, her family and the world in general (all of them hilarious). When she isn’t busy monologuing on such, she’s politely hinting to her estranged friend Pamela (Carey Mulligan) that it’s now time to move out, while her daughter and Felix’s sister Venetia (Alison Oliver), excruciatingly bored with life on the estate, soon stops her pouting once she notices her brother’s newly arrived friend. Saltburn gives each the opportunity to reveal the dysfunctions behind the airs they put on, but it usually takes the presence of Oliver to bring them out - which, as the film begins to reveal, is no coincidence.

One of the things Saltburn does well in the outset is disguising just how deeply (and madly) Oliver’s admiration for Felix - or at least what he represents - actually goes. While the film initially presents him as a bit of an oddball, it’s not until he’s arrived at Saltburn that we begin to see that his intentions for bonding with Felix run far deeper than just friendship. He doesn’t just see Felix as everything he wants to be, he sees Saltburn as everything he wants, full-stop. The first disturbing flashpoint - involving a rather unpleasant scene with a bathtub (you’ll know it when you see it) - offers a stomach-turning and chilling indication of the deviancy taking root in his mind. This particular moment is also just the first of several uncomfortable actions Oliver indulges in as his obsessions deepen. Barry Keoghan deserves an amount of credit for his portrayal, not just for taking on the myriad of challenging scenes that the film uses for provocative purposes, but also for portraying him as a convincingly disjointed sociopath, torn between his obsession for Felix and his animalistic pursuit of so much more. Through him, Saltburn regales the message that it is not absolute power that necessarily corrupts - it is the promise of the rapturous pleasure that comes with it. And while he’s not a tragic character by any means, he is a fascinatingly bizarre hollow vessel to watch, all the way up to a final scene that is guaranteed to win the film lasting notoriety (and possibly a re-evaluation of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder on the Dancefloor as just a harmless pop ditty).

Saltburn is at its best when it is dealing in both the madness that comes with obsession, and in its gleeful depiction of the immodesty of upper-class functions, be they on college campus (complete with lavish shots of puddles of bright-orange sick), or on the posh totty-laden grounds of the elites. For a movie focused on such themes, it is also a demand that such a film should also be unyieldingly stylish in its visuals. Saltburn is unremittingly so, often layering its depiction of the mid-2000s with a saturation of colour vivid enough to bring the period back to life - at least for the viewers old enough to have gone through it the first time. The soundtrack doesn’t let up in this regard either: the likes of Flo Rida’s Low, Mason’s Exceeder and MGMT’s Time To Pretend are all used for maximum nostalgic effect, and normally for the backing of a raging party scene or two. Were the parties of the early 21st century really this fun? Probably not, but Saltburn takes no issue with insisting that they were, and in captivating fashion. 

What isn’t quite so captivating though is the execution of other core themes in Saltburn’s depiction of life at the top. If this movie is intended to be a satire, then it doesn’t really make much new sport of its apparent targets - that of the vapid lifestyles of the rich, their hypocritical view of pity upon those beneath them, nor the opportunistic nature of middle-class aspiration. What Saltburn has to say about the first two has all been done before, and the Cattons are no more than a handful of tropes taken from any modern, class-oriented British farce of the past thirty years. What it has to say about the latter, no matter how disturbing its visual metaphors are, is a no-brainer. Of course people are going to hitch a ride on the backs of others higher up on the social ladder, and even stick a knife in to further themselves if granted the opportunity. There’s plenty of impact in Saltburn’s visuals but not an awful lot in its message, and while it doesn’t hold back in throwing its punches, they ultimately all land soft.

Another major failing also lies with how the movie delivers on its conclusion - one that it clearly wants to be earth-shattering, but also one you can see from a mile off. As it starts to become extremely clear that Oliver isn’t who he necessarily says he is - much to Felix’s own outrage at his betrayal - he’s still nonetheless able to retain his place on the Saltburn estate through some out-manoeuvring of both Felix and his family that is witlessly written. The only character seemingly aware of Oliver’s ulterior motives long before he acts on them is Farleigh, who is suavely played by Madekwe - so much so that you’d root for him if not for the fact he’s also an elitist twit like the rest of his family. But while the film plays plenty of lip service to the viceful lives of the Cattons, it gives none to the power games the upper-class can also play, especially when closing ranks to shut out outsiders unworthy of sharing their status. Whether or not the lack of this is also another attempt at symbolism to suggest the rich are predominantly stupid is irrelevant - it just makes it clear that much of Saltburn’s intelligence is only in the visuals. 

Still, brainless as it can occasionally be, there is nothing about Saltburn that doesn’t make it an entertaining watch. It is also very well-acted throughout the cast. Along with the above mentions, both Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant are great, with Rosamund’s Elsbeth an absolute hoot (especially her thoughts on Pulp’s Common People) and Grant’s Sir James having some amusingly blusterous moments as well. But as a whole, Saltburn is good - certainly engaging in a deeply twisted way - but merely that. As a dark comedy, it is laugh-out-loud funny. As a disturbing thriller, its shock value alone will live in the memory. But as an allegory on class mobility, be it aimed at those who enjoy power and privilege or those who’d anything to have it, it is neither cutting nor intelligent enough. Ultimately, it comes off a bit like chatting to a member of the landed gentry: enthralling at first, and certainly an experience you’ll remember. But you can’t help but feel you spent it with company that wasn’t all that bright.