When the pricey chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) welcomes the well-heeled guests in his restaurant Hawthorne situated on a beautiful island, the air was so warm. In that luring ambiance of exquisite cuisine, $1250 paid guests expected a lot. With an unsettling clap, chef Slowik hires the attention of his esteemed clients and brings his accounted serves. Every item in the menu not so heard or seen before brings a story to the table. Script by Will Tracy and Seth Reiss works wonders here along with the attention-winning polished actor Fiennes’ delivery of the scene.

While eating, the guests realize the master chef knows their follies in the past and his designs on the menu connect them individually. For Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) and his Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), It was a romantic date. Tyler waited for this distinct menu for ages and he is someone relishes every item on the menu like an ambitious young chef while Margot tries and fails in eating them. Look at the other tables – three techies from another firm of the restaurant owner, celebrated food critic Lillian (Janet McTeer) and her editor, a rich old couple, a waning star and his assistant, and the lost soul in one corner– later we identify her as chef’s overdrunk mother who witnessed he killing her abusive husband.

With every serve in The Menu, an artistic and horrifying thing happens. Slowly, the guests realize they are part of the special menus of Hawthorne. They run for life but are being hunted down easily by Slowik’s assistant chefs and waiters.

The job-obsessed Slowik cannot stand artistic lies and snobbishness from the elites. Everybody is caught in his predesigned web. But one original escapes and eats an original double cheeseburger since she could challenge the real talent of the chef. Others met their spicy death, an item they least imagined in the special menu of a storyteller chef.

Mark Mylod has cooked The Menu on slow fire with bizarre ingredients-finely chopped and mixed.

Good to see Anya Taylor-Joy after The Queen's Gambit, right looks for this bizarre theme. Hong Chau’s Elsa also bags attention.