Essentially a live-action emo reboot of Ratatouille, The Menu is a palatable paean to the twin joys of nostalgia and petty revenge. Penned by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy of The Onion and directed by Mark Mylod of Succession, the film does its boujie best to skewer the dichotomy between the takers and the givers in society. With base notes of bloody class warfare, a dash of ‘reject modernity’ folk horror, and a dusting of Netflix food porn docuseries, this is a Gen-Z ‘popcorn movie’ in the most literal sense.

Reiss and Tracy dive into the increasingly pretentious, self-indulgent world of haute cuisine to craft a primal scream about the state of the industry of art — be it film, television, literature, visual art or food. The artist, despite his or her inclinations or inspirations, is always beholden to the critics, the investors and the fans, and The Menu is both a violent rejection of that paradigm as well as a darkly humorous acceptance of it all.

“Do not eat, our menu is too precious,” master chef Julian Slowik (a formidably intense Ralph Fiennes) tells the guests at his minimalist restaurant, Hawthorn, which is only accessible by boat and charges $1,250 a head. Once there, you’re trapped. Bunuel’s Exterminating Angel — or Agatha Christie — may have been an inspiration. But here, The Menu swaps out the baroque subtlety of its predecessors for a sort of schlocky schizophrenia that speaks to a very modern sensibility.

The eleven guests — the place only seats twelve — are carefully picked, all with some agenda that Slowik objects to, except for down-to-earth, cheeseburger-loving escort Margot (Taylor-Joy). Her date, culinary snob Tyler (Nicholas Hoult), is obsessed with Slowik and beautifully embodies the very recent problem of the Instagram foodie — flaunting his knowledge of gadgets like the Paco Jet and spewing commentary on “mouthfeel”. Other unpleasantly privileged people include a food critic (Janet McTeer), who refers to the seafood as “thalassic” and specialises in shutting restaurants down with her scathing reviews; three entitled, tipsy tech bros (Rob Yang, Arturo Castro and Mark St Cyr); a film star (John Leguizamo) and his assistant, and a miserable couple who’ve been to the restaurant eleven times but can’t remember anything they’ve eaten there. And there’s Slowik’s grim old mother, who doesn’t eat at all, only boozes silently in a corner, a shade from his troubled past. They’re shown the way off the boat by alarmingly cool maître d’ Elsa (Hong Chau), accompanied by goats. The chef lives on the island in a separate house that no one is allowed to enter. The staff don’t leave either. It’s more of a cult than a career.

The central metaphor is painfully obvious. The Menu is not about food, or eating, but about the consumption of art, as well as the forces the artist battles while attempting to create. Chef Slowik has sold his soul for success, subjecting himself to the whims of the monied investors, the critics, the celebrities, his mindless consumers, and worst of all, his fanboys, who think they know more than the experts, and are willing to meddle too (the fanboys get it worst of all here). That’s not to say that Chef Slowik is a victim. No, he’s the antagonist here, but Fiennes plays him as a tortured soul who is attempting to reckon — violently — with his own selling out, and takes no pleasure in the process.

Fiennes himself plays a fine version of his classic offering — like the ‘Tooth Fairy’ from the Hannibal sequel, he does a masterly job with the role of a tortured artist with raging mommy issues, steaming at the injustice of an eternal, self-defeating quest for greatness that destroys every personal relationship. Bracketed by luscious cinematography from Peter Deming and Colin Stetson’s icy, incisive score, the Menu leaves us with much to digest, even after a self-referentially indulgent ending.