Saltburn film review

 

Saltburn

Brideshead Revisited on steroids

Note this is a spoiler review, but I wouldn't recommend anyone to see it anyway!

I went to see the film Saltburn more for research, as I'm writing a book about a Traditional Catholic at Oxford; I'm looking at pretty well everything related. I even recently bought second-hand a DVD of a film called The Riot Club, another poorly made sensationalist exploitative film about wealthy students. It is based on the real-life Bullingdon Club, where the men-only young toffs Club members smash up Oxford restaurants and then pay eminently for its renovation. You can't make this stuff up, but it's true..

                It is, of course, impossible to compare the two stories Saltburn and Brideshead. In contrast, Brideshead Revisited (the book) was about final redemption and finding God, but Saltburn is the complete opposite. It's an evil, nasty little film with no redeeming qualities about a manipulative bisexual poor Oxford student who wheedles his way into an already quite decadent wealthy nobility. He manages to get into the circle of friends of a rich student and is invited to the family's stately home 'Saltburn' we are then taken through scenes of drug abuse, extreme swearing (I've never heard the F-bomb used so much), the film is sexually charged throughout. It has a strange approach to this type of decadence, some quite original and disgusting; this is one for those who say women are worse than men in this regard; the writer and director is a woman, Emerald Fennell. This film is all about finding evil; even one of the leads, Felix Catton, dies at the centre of a maze beneath the statue of a horned god.

                The other leading man, Oliver Quick, is a manipulative bisexual and murders the entire family one by one and makes them look like accidents, getting left the stately home 'Saltburn.' I'm afraid I didn't stay until the end. The sight of this Oliver Quick, played by Barry Keoghan (shame on him), dancing through his now Stately Home rooms was more than I could stand, especially as his manhood was often on show and the actor seemed partially aroused. Disgusting, So I can't tell you what the actual ending was.

                This film was too eager to shock but was very predictable. It is a  film to avoid, and happily, there was only one other person in the cinema when I saw it!

Prayer Crusader St Philomena.