The Menu (2022) KILL COUNT

[Music] welcome to the kill count where we tally up the victims in all our favorite horror movies man show you how they were made I'm James a Janice and today we're looking at the menu released in 2022 the menu is set in an ultra exclusive restaurant where the staff has Sinister intentions for their wealthy customers it ridicules several aspects of fine dining culture from snobby food critics to pretentious plating I'm not personally a part of the foodie world this movie parodies but I am famili

ar with it thanks to my housemate collaborator and best man James gresle who joined us when we covered this movie on the podcast I highly recommend you listen to that to hear the insanely specific details this movie gets right also check out d and d and d our dinner D and D podcast where gresle DMS a story almost as old as the kill count at this point it's fun hearing him become more and more familiar with stuff like uh I I don't know emulsions and shit despite my secondhand familiarity with the

subject matter the menu is one of my favorites from the holy horror year of 2022 honestly probably top five it has an Immaculate cast with everyone down to the side characters playing their parts perfectly the outstanding Ensemble is led by a pair of the year's best villains Chef Julian slowick and Elsa his Mater D raay fine and Hong Chow are incredible and on a rewatch when you know all these characters and their relationships you really see how every line of dialogue has dual meaning or at le

ast illustrates who these people are the menu is effective with its whore a slow boil that builds to a roiling nightmare for the patrons but it's also a great comedy don't be fooled by the trailer lines you hear early on we liquefy we spify we gel weel weel it ends up being hilariously dark the humor and suspense are equal ingredients here it's all part of the menu how many kills will get served up in this kitchen nightmare I believe we have a reservation to find [Music] out the movie begins wit

h an invitation to a turttle card accepting that invitation is Tyler a little rich boy who fancies himself quite the foodie it's the balance of the products you need the mouth feel of the Minette the same cannot be said for his working-class galp pal Margo Mills please don't say mouth Margo is played by Anna Taylor Joy last scene on the kill count in the vich while Tyler is played by Renfield himself Nicholas Holt Tyler's taking Margot to Hawthorne a trendy restaurant where the meal is 1,200 buc

ks a person it's so exclusive they have to take a boat to get there since the restaurant is on a tiny Private Island while checking in Margot learns her reservation was originally meant for Tyler's previous girlfriend a little awkward though not as awkward as him trying to make her smell his finger doofy stop H's maer D Elsa leads the guests on a tour of the Island's facilities and shows them how the whole staff lives together in a culty bomb shelter well everyone except head chef Julian slowick

who lives in his own dope ass off limits Cottage pretty impressive but Margo's more preoccupied with Richard librt another guest she seemed to recognize on the boat before we can pull at that plot thread it's time for dinner and a show where the show is also you know dinner first up is the Amo boou a Bo staggy way to say appetizer or more specifically a somehow even doucher way to say orderer it's uh I I don't know what the fuck is that we have a compressed and pickled cucumber melon milk snow

and CH lace oh cool cool cool at least we get a good taste of our supporting characters here all played pitch perfectly by their performers snobby food critic Lillian Bloom and her editor/ Ted are insufferable constantly commenting with snide asides Finance Bros s and Dave and Bryce are so-called power tasters who treat the whole thing like a status experience they're boisterous and arrogant since they work for Doug veric who owns the restaurant and this entire Island to working money yeah yeah

baby we're pathetic aren't we oh my god dude somebody shoot us John leuo plays a washed up actor who's only called movie star in the end credits though you can catch his name as George Diaz thanks to his assistant Felicity who's trying to quit working for him Chef slowick makes his entrance no not that entrance that's not what I meant guys and introduces the first course of the meal with a Thunderclap this dish is an undersea Overture of scallops and seaweed served upon a uh tasteful rock it rep

resents the island itself using its Flora its rocks and even its seawater the way Chef describes it he sounds like an ecological nihilist saying none of them matter in the face of Nature's Beauty and Harmony we are about a frightened nanc nature is timeless enjoy after the patrons enjoy their uh saltwater cubes or whatever slowick presents the second course with a history lesson he says bread has been around for a dozen Millennia and is often associated with the poor which introduces the catch s

ince bread is for the working man these rich bitches ain't getting nothing but spreads Margo sees it as a dig at their expense basically insulting you but Tyler ignores her content to just dig in though they're parodic these courses do feel authentic thanks to the involvement of French chef Dominique kren the first woman to win three Michelin stars for a US restaurant kren crafted each of the menu's courses basically in character as Chef slowick giving them all in emotional coldness to reflect t

heir fictional Creator she also spent more than a day with Ray fine just talking through how a chef would behave in a kitchen to make the courses look the part they were shot by filmmaker David gal who made The Fantastic Jiro Dreams of Sushi as second unit director he filmed the presentation vignettes after production wrapped sometimes in Adam McKay's office the style here is just like in Chef's Table gelb's popular Netflix series the show was even referenced by Tyler who's a fan I I've watched

every fucking episode of Chef's Table two or three times many of the cast actually used Chef's Table to research the world to find dining the insulting sauces don't sit well with the finance Bros saurin tries to pull rank for some bread unironically saying to Elsa you know who we are right she certainly does as if her contempt of everyone on the guest list wasn't clear from her Island to her she openly admits it to him with a Sinister whisper you will eat less than you desire and more than you d

eserve SLO takes a beat to give some extra love to another guest whom he reveals as his perpetually drunken mother he recounts a time from his childhood during a fateful Taco Tuesday when his drunken father began strangling his mom to stop him SLO sted his dad in the thigh with a pair of scissors poof can't unring that Taco Bell this traumatic Taco towel serves as the basis for the next dish with Cutlery courtesy of the tethered all the movie's plating was done by food stylist Kendall Gensler wh

o made sure each dish looked authentically high-end however even though it looked great the food was often gross by time the cast had to eat it you can tell we can act our asses off cuz we made that those those cold props look look delicious Andy Taylor Joy says Nicholas Holt impressively committed to actually eating everything the only time it got bad he said was Downing all the oily sauces the tortillas for these tacos are personalized with laser engraved images Lilian features restaurants tha

t close due to her bad reviews and receiv some edible credible evidence of her husband's Affairs and John leguisamo is reminded of a crappy movie he did that flopped should have been the past Tyler's tortillas call him out for snapping food picks which was explicitly against the rules making this a sort of you lose good day sir moment the business boys have it even worse though since their tortillas feature evidence of fraud committed by their boss and Slow's angel investor Doug veric what the h

ell are these These are tortillas tortillas delicios with the evening's mood beginning to sizzle slowick brings out his sous chef Jeremy luden Jeremy's the brains behind the fourth course the mess SLO describes Jeremy's talents like Homer Simpson talking about an animatronic show he's very good but he's not great he says Jeremy will never aspire to Greatness partly because his passion has been crushed by the food service industry after a couple of goodbye kisses Jeremy quits his job by making a

mess of his mind matter in the first kill of the film this jarring act of violence is the point at which it's finally nakedly clear that things are fucked Panic ensues amongst the guests although Hawthorne's staff remains strictly professional and here we have a biodynamic Cabernet Fran from our friends at domain bretto oh glad to see Peter Gross still thriving in the restaurant industry Peter Piper picked a pack of perfect pretzels hold up your last name is Piper Richard and Anne triy to make a

hasty exit but they're stopped by Elsa and some beefy bus boys Elsa's done with niceties so as punishment one of Dick's digits is promptly loed off that doesn't deter the business boys in the movie star from plotting an escape but their plan goes so poorly that the staff doesn't even bother punishing them please let me help you back to your table Margo's pulled aside for a meeting with slowick who's upset about the surprise guest at this deadly dinner party she hasn't been eating any of the foo

d and has been unimpressed with all the high flutin Halo Margo's the only person here who's refreshingly grounded treating the staff like actual human beings he knew my name bit yeah I noticed you didn't ask it name yeah well you know class commentary is all over the menu which isn't surprising given the team behind IT director Mark myot and co-writer will Tracy both worked on succession alongside producers Adam McKay and will frell Tracy was inspired to write the story for the menu after dining

at Cornelius seafood restaurant an Island restaurant in Norway he co-wrote the script with Seth Reese who drew on his satirical experience as headwriter of the onion SLO has noticed that Margo's an outsider so gives her 15 minutes to decide whether she belongs with the guests or with the restaurant staff the takers or the givers not that It ultimately matters we're all going to die tonight isn't that right yes sir the actors playing Slow's Army of Sue soldiers underwent a week-long kitchen boot

camp to properly act the part it was run by Dominique kren second ad Lauren Candela and John banaste a chef local to Savannah Georgia Hawthorne's exteriors were played by various islands around Savannah while the restaurant's interior was a set everything seen out those giant Windows was comped in to replace a blue screen over a flowery pallet cleanser Chef slowick explains to the the customers why they're there each of them represents a part of the restaurant industry he despises Lillian and T

ed's magazine has destroyed the careers of several chefs while Richard and ANS wealth allows them to casually eat at Hawthorne without appreciating the food they can't even remember a single dish after 11 visits cod cod it wasn't Cod you donkey it was halib the trio of Chads worked for Doug veric the investor who bought Hawthorne during covid but treated it like an investment rather than an artistic Endeavor that's why veric is the next guest of honor the guests see him strung up over the sea in

a pair of symbolic angel wings on Elsa's signal the Fallen Angel commences veric is slowly lowered into the ocean to drown in front of the horrified guests Margo's timer goes off so she's brought to meet SLO in his office he correctly identifies her as a sex worker referring to it exclusively as a fellow service job but that means Margot isn't Tyler's girlfriend just a date he hired for the evening since the restaurant doesn't seat parties of want except drunk moms this reveal is great and reco

ntextualizes a lot of earlier lines and reactions it's your dime Tyler you're the customer you're paying him to serve you doesn't really matter whether he likes you or not right wait what is that nothing Margo also reveals that Richard lebrent was a previous client who hired her to play out a disgusting incest fantasy that Shades in one of his wife's lines talking about how Margot resembles their daughter she really does look like Claire the only plot hole there is that fucking nobody looks like

Ana Taylor Joy come on SLO and Margo have a candid convo where they both say they no longer enjoy the service they provide but that table talk is tabled to continue the dinner the guests are let outside for some fresh air and the next course slash event entitled man's Folly Sue Chef Katherine Keller recounts an incident where Chef slowick sexually harassed her shielded from consequence by a celebrity status to make amend SLO allows her to stab him in the thigh the same place he stabbed his fath

er many taco Tuesdays ago the group makes like a pie chart and breaks down by gender with the men given a chance to escape the island on foot it's another trailer moment but I do love how saurin blows their head start if they do catch okay 45 seconds starts now while the weight staff play hide-and-seek with the men Catherine leads the women inside for their own special meal the ladies get to air out some dirty French Laundry an confirms Richard's previous affair with Margot while Catherine revea

ls the extent of her creative control oh everyone dying was my pitch actually super proud of it she says the menu only works if they all die in the end it's the only way to tie the whole concept together you know like a good rug Margo fusses up that her real name is actually Aaron but I'm going to do what the other characters do and keep calling her Margo the men are summarily tagged and bad chicken shit Ted staying hidden the longest among the chicken shit a special bite for the last guest to b

e caught once everyone is Led inside and back to their seats slowick takes a moment to single out Tyler he says that Tyler was invited since he's a self-proclaimed foodie but unlike the other guests Tyler was told ahead of time about the knight's twist that explains his nonchalant reactions when shit started hitting the fan that also means he hired Margot to come with him knowing that she would be killed it's a scummy reveal consistent with Tyler's entitlement over the people and places he pays

for Tyler you need to apologize to me right now you cannot speak to me that way actually I can because ding-dong I'm the one who's paying so maybe shut up and eat Margo is rightfully pissed but SLO says Tyler is a special boy he even gets to wear a chef's jacket and look at that it's personalized things take a turn when slowick asks Tyler to cook something he gathers all the warm bodies into the kitchen to watch Tyler cook cook like a college freshman the resulting dish is Tyler's bullshit with

its signature ingredient of utter lack of cohesion to finalize this humiliation SLO tells Tyler the real reason he was invited you or why the mystery has been drained from our art with a gentle whisper from Chef Tyler turns in his jacket and descends into Hell's Kitchen what Chef whispered is never reveal but it clearly made an impact since Tyler is shortly found hanging out in the closet removing himself from the menu like oh so many delicious Taco Bell items SL thinks Margo might be more helpf

ul in the kitchen and before you know it she's reciting their motto yes chef he asks her to fetch a barrel a Tas he claims Elsa forgot to do while she gets her hands dirty outside John leamo speaks up since he's the only guest who still doesn't know why he's here hilariously slowc reveals he just hated the actor's movie calling Dr Sunshine he can tell leamo treated the role like a paycheck instead of an expression of art Pretty Petty although not quite as Petty as the reasoning for Felicity what

school did you go to Brown student loans no I'm sorry you're dying in earlier scripts Lego's character was a fictionalized Daniel Radcliff whose Rotten Tomato of a role was eigor in 2015's Victor Frankenstein leg oama wasn't the only recasting either Margo was originally said to be played by Emma Stone who left due to conflicts with other projects you couldn't ask for a better cast than this one though and they all said milod ran a warm and welcoming set that fostered creativity and collaborati

on seriously they said it so many times my research and I love to hear stuff like that milot took a few cues from his work on succession like treating all the characters as actual human beings to keep them relatable despite their entitlement he also got a lot of mileage out of improv having his cast stay in character even when they weren't being filmed the way that Mark wanted to shoot was 360 we were all miked all the time we were always improvising the entire cast never left the set not even d

uring other people's close-ups and with multiple cameras running myad found extra shots to use during editing he didn't even know he had Hong Chow called Leguizamo the best improviser he and felicity's actor Amy Carrero came up with one of the funniest exchanges on their own I wrote a negative recommendation to Sony I know you cced me on it on her way back to the restaurant Margot takes a detour to swick's private Cottage and finds out it features a fullon replica of Hawthorn's kitchen she's cor

nered by Elsa who's jealous of all the attention she's been given by Chef the militaristic Mater D has considered Margot unworthy from the get-go with regular reminders that she's not meant to be here miss Mills Miss Mills you will be sitting in Miss Westervelt seat Elsa's played by Hong Chow in what may be the standout performance in a movie with a lot of Great Performances she really sells the cracks in Elsa's composure when her jealousy over Chef gets the best of her Chow received an Oscar no

m for the whale the same year the menu was released and in an honor exactly on the same level was nominated for a prime rib for best supporting actor at last year's dead meat horror Awards Elsa attacks Margo with a knife kicking off an extended kitchen brawl Margo manages to gain the upper hand with a paco Jet and downsizes Elsa role on the staff with a stab to the throat her last words are insisting that she didn't forget the barrel a sad dying Devotion to her Chef while SLO has some compelling

points I think the movie makes it clear that he's also full of shit everything he does is fascistic meant to conform to the sacred way he thinks food should be made and served he talks about the importance of nature but has effectively bent the whole island to the whims of his restaurant the guy's so self-important he even compares himself to MLK did he just quote Martin Luther King yep that's he did a deleted scene has Margot calling him out for this asking him why he doesn't run a soup kitche

n if he's so miserable his answer is characteristically evasive why do we do the things we do Margo keeps poking around the cottage and discovers a room full of photos from sck's past he seems much happier in these pictures especially in an employee of the month award from a burger joint possibly his first ever kitchen job she also finds a radio and uses it to call for help from the mainland it appears to pay off as they see the Coast Guard arriving for a restaurant rescue the chefs try to tidy

bandaging and bibbing up their Pat pons but a secret note like was slips to the officer leads to a supper time standoff it's a moment of immense relief for the dinner guests when Chef slowick is forced to his knees unfortunately the whole thing was just a bit of dinner theater and the Guardsman nothing but an undercover cook it's a crushing defeat but Margo's got one last trick up her sleeveless dress she'll Rebel on slox terms restaurant terms I don't like your food what did you say I said I do

n't like your food and I would like to send it back she rips into Chef's cooking calling it obsessive and pretentious and says he's taken the joy out of eating she implies he's a failure of an artist whose intellectual Detachment has left her hungry in every way she challenges him to prove her wrong by cooking something simple and filling a real cheeseburger not some fancy deconstructed Aon bullshit a real cheeseburger slow can't resist taking the bait and Fries up a burger for her damn she gett

ing a double double well the previous courses had their presentations and platings filmed with passion this is the only time we see the actual cooking of food filmed with the same love unless you count Tyler's bullshit Margo confirms the burger tastes as good as it looks but says she can only manage a single bite unfortunately I think my eyes were a little bigger than my stomach well that's just a boldfaced lie she asks to take the rest to go a request that might as well be spitting on the floor

in certain fancy restaurants but in the spirit of the moment Chef makes her a box the Queen's Gambit worked and Margot has found a way to leave this place all she had to do was give Chef slowick one final Taste Of The Joy he once felt cooking while Margot commanders the fake Coast Guard boat the rest of the patrons accept their fate they even pay for the bill gratuiti included of course as the restaurant staff prepares for the final course they begin to Plate dessert on the floor and tables the

mselves a move inspired by Grant agot's deconstructed dessert at the three Michelin star alinia in Chicago I don't think alinia had marshmallow cows or cute little chocolate caps though this reference was brought to life in large part by production designer Ethan Todman who rigorously planned and reverse engineered what it would end up looking like on set the marshmallow ponchos were made by costume designer Amy Westcott who also worked on Black Swan they used thousands of real actual marshmallo

ws individually glued together Westcott who is director milad's wife made them by hand with a team that included their kids my children still won't speak to me SLO says dessert was inspired by the s'more a collection of cheap overprocessed food made delicious via fire sl's whole Spiel here was inspired by ra Fine's honest reaction to learning what a s'more was I didn't know what the fuck a s'more was I said to them no one outside the US knows what a s'more is so I riffed what I thought the chef

might say about a s'more the writers liked it so they expanded it into a full monologue slowick reminds the patrons that they represent the ruin of his art and life and with one last dedication to his staff I love you all we love you slow sets himself his restaurant and everyone inside a blaze as the guests are cooked to Perfection the mystery Barrel retrieved by Margo ignites blowing up the restaurant and everyone inside our count of 31 here includes all the guests the chefs the weight staff an

d the Somalia the fireball is witnessed by Margot from the boat the movie ends with her wiping her mouth with the titular menu and taking a big old bite of beef how many kills did one dinner ticket entitle us to see let's find out if the numbers oh hey what is this a special bite for reaching the end of the kill count oh thank you all right M oh oh you really did that it was good thank you 35 people died in the menu the dessert course taken out a whopping 31 of them the victims consisted of 24 m

en and 11 women giving us this deconstructed take on a pie chart though the ratio is new we have seen 35 kills twice before and Freddy versus Jason and da of the Dead with a runtime of 107 minutes the menu gave us a kill on average just about every 3 minutes I'll give the golden Chainsaw for coolest kill to the desert course a menu as ambitious as this one needs a flashy finale and this s'mores Massacre was more than fitting do machete for lus kill will go to Doug veric it wasn't a bad kill but

we'd never seen this guy before and we had to watch him die from afar and that's it the menu was released in 2022 and received four nominations at the dead meat horror Awards go watch those if you haven't and get ready for the next one on March 3rd until next time I'm James a Janise this has been the kill count hey everybody thanks a lot for watching the menu kill count this is James gressle hi everybody I host d and d and d that James plugged in the intro that's right and uh also lives with me

yes and what am I eating here dude uh that is a pissard egg which is I think what they feature in the movie if I remember right it's a hot and cold egg of creme fresh and egg yolk that's been lightly poached with some maple syrup and chives maple syrup okay mhm yeah this is actually really good good I'm glad I'm not lying yes uh where can people find D and D and D you can find it on all podcast platforms Spotify Apple podcast wherever you get your podcasts MH and it's been going for 5 Years seas

on 6 is about to start um coming soon so plenty of time to catch up or Dive Right In if you want to get in at the end of St insane that would be insane no start at the beginning yeah start at the beginning I'm Flack Tansen I'm a gnome Bard and uh Chelsea's in there and our good friends Mike and Beth are in there it's a great story got a lovely fan base if you're already a fan thank you that's the best all right well thank you for the egg yeah and for uh helping me with it to the numbers bit I'm

I'm so um it's hard to keep coming up with them oh also real fast I'm supposed to plug the new merch we got Valentine's merch at deadmeat store.com go check it out looks really cool looks like this okay you got a good look great back to me and grle for the sign off be good people