I Finally Caved in to the Pressure and Watched Saltburn

Beyond shock value and class consciousness, this movie has a lot to say about being kind of bitchy

Author’s note: The movie I’m reviewing contains depictions of sexual assault, suicide and emotional abuse. I’ll be talking about those scenes in detail, so please avoid this article and the movie if those subjects might cause you distress. Also, spoilers for Saltburn (2023), obviously.

I’d considered seeing Emerald Fennell’s sophomore psychological thriller film Saltburn when it was out in theaters for a few reasons. The first one being that I adore Jacob Elordi as an actor but I have tired of seeing him playing abusers in his mainstream film and TV appearances (The Kissing Booth trilogy notwithstanding). The second one being that I love a good “rich people bad” movie; as a person who has always used film as escapism from reality, it seemed fitting to apply Saltburn to the wounds that capitalism has left on me and our society as a whole. The third being that it seemed weird and gay and my standards for media are really so low that I would willingly give up two hours of my life to partake in any story that fit those two adjectives. 

But I didn’t go see it. I got lazy, and as 2023 came to a close, the desire to see Saltburn left my mind as it left the theaters. That said, the movie seemed to have left quite an impression on the people who had watched it, as two songs used on its soundtrack blew up on social media in the months following the movie’s release. It took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to figure out that “Murder on the Dancefloor” by Sophie Ellis-Bextor and “Perfect (Exceeder)” by Mason and Princess Superstar, both 2000s hits in their own right, were present on every TikTok and Instagram reel because they were used in the end-of-year sleeper queer indie hit Saltburn, which is set in 2006 England. Beyond that, two good friends of mine had independently recommended me to see Saltburn, and to not see Saltburn, respectively, which only made the movie’s presence in my mind increase. And as I struggled to write a really solid piece for Dog-Fearing Man, my eyes anxiously glancing at the corner of my screen as January slipped through my fingers, I decided, fuck it. I’ll review Saltburn for my first post of 2024. 

I’ll offer an extremely brief summation of the movie’s plot, not because I particularly want to urge my readers to go and see it for themselves, but because the story is very straightforward until the last thirty minutes or so. Oliver Quick (portrayed by Barry Keoghan) is a scholarship student to Oxford who starts off his freshman year with no friends, save for a nerdy blonde boy with anger problems who pretends to be above the college social hierarchy. Oliver quickly ditches his outcast friend as soon as Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi with an eyebrow piercing, swoon), an extremely wealthy, extremely popular boy befriends him after Oliver does him a kindhearted favor. Felix quickly realizes that Oliver can’t keep up with his rich-boy lifestyle and financially supports him to prevent Oliver from being shamed for his lower class upbringing. They spend the semester frolicking with Felix’s friend group, including Felix’s cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe), with whom Oliver has a competitive academic relationship. When Oliver’s father suddenly passes away, leaving him stuck with his addiction-addled mother, Felix invites him to stay with his family for the summer at their luxurious countryside manor, Saltburn. 

Oliver meets Felix’s mother Elspeth (Rosamund Pike), his sister Venetia (Allison Oliver) and his father James (Richard E. Grant) at Saltburn. He spends the summer lounging around in swimsuits, suntanning and reading books with the Cattons, which is apparently what rich people do when they don’t have to work. Venetia makes a pass at Oliver, and they hook up against a statue on the manor grounds. Farleigh sees their encounter from his bedroom window and tells Felix. Oliver manages to convince Felix that Farleigh was lying and that Venetia had kissed Oliver but he rebuffed her advances. Farleigh attempts to humiliate Oliver at a party as revenge by setting him up to sing “Rent” by Pet Shop Boys on karaoke in front of the everyone, belittling his socioeconomic class and dependency on the Cattons for room and board. That night, Oliver sneaks into Farleigh’s room, wakes him up and gropes him, commanding him to “behave.” Farleigh is kicked out of Saltburn the next morning, after James claims that Farleigh had been caught sending emails sell costly trinkets stolen for the manor.

For his birthday, the Cattons plan Oliver a big celebration, but not before Felix drives Oliver to his childhood home in a less rich part of England. Oliver panics as Felix meets Oliver’s normal, loving mother and very much alive father. Felix is furious to find out he’s been lied to but decides to conceal the deception from the rest of his family and wait until after the party to kick out Oliver. They argue in the center of the manor’s hedge maze that night, and Felix is found dead in the same spot the next morning. Oliver throws suspicion on Farleigh, who had sneaked into the party and provided some people with drugs, implying that Felix may have died from an overdose. Farleigh is then cut off from his family and banned from Saltburn permanently. Weeks later, Oliver approaches Venetia while she’s taking a bath and Venetia scolds him for trying to steal Felix’s identity after his death. Oliver tries to kiss Venetia, but she rejects him. Venetia is found dead in the bathtub the next day, having slit her wrists.

Nearly two decades later, Oliver is writing in a cafe when Elspeth arrives and the two catch up, as Oliver had heard that James had died recently. Oliver returns to Saltburn with Elspeth, but she quickly comes down with a terminal illness. It’s then revealed that the entire downfall of the Catton family: the deaths of Felix, Venetia and Elspeth were all orchestrated by Oliver’s design. Oliver had broken Felix’s bike so that he could offer his own bike as a favor and befriend Felix. Oliver put Farleigh’s cocaine in a bottle of alcohol that he knew Felix would drink. He gave razor blades to a drunk, distraught Venetia after their argument. Oliver knew Elspeth would be at the cafe and managed to convince her to leave Saltburn to him in her will. After Oliver confesses this to a comatose Elspeth at the hospital, he removes her breathing tube and watches her die. Cut to Oliver dancing naked through the manor, pausing only to do a line of cocaine, and the credits roll. 

Saltburn is ultimately a movie about envy and ruthlessness. All of the central characters treat each other poorly, using financial and emotional leverage to manipulate and sabotage one another. The only difference was that the Cattons fought over petty slights like girlfriends and expensive plates, whereas Oliver had crafted a plan to enmesh himself in Felix’s social circle, assumingly to obtain his status. After his first series of lies unraveled, Oliver went big, taking Felix’s life entirely, to keep scaling the ladder and eventually taking the fruits of the family fortune for himself. The Cattons played checkers while Oliver played chess. 

I knew the major plot points of Saltburn going into it, so I was sure to look for any deceitful or manipulative behaviors from Oliver as clues for the big reveal at the end. What I actually noticed at first was how slimy Felix was with Oliver. Coaxing him into transporting Felix’s broken bike back to campus, practically commanding Oliver to join their group at the pub, showering Oliver with physical and emotional affection (I hesitate to use the word “lovebombing,” but it wouldn’t be wrong to say it) and taking Oliver to his estranged family’s home despite his protests were all subtle methods to control Oliver and objectify him as the pitiful lower-class boy with the tragic backstory who Felix graciously took under his wing. Oliver is even warned by the math nerd after Oliver abandons him that Felix will “get bored of” Oliver eventually. Because that’s what self-involved people do when they have that level of access: they pick up the people they’re into like a child playing with a toy and toss them away when they want the next new thing. While it was generous to pay for Oliver’s drinks to spare him embarrassment and house him for the summer, it also fed Felix’s ego to wield his wealth in a way that completely transformed Oliver’s circumstances. I actually deeply disliked Felix as a character for the first third of the movie, and considered him to be the same kind of manipulative parasite that Oliver would eventually be revealed as, but I certainly don’t believe he deserved to die just for being a rich, narcissistic asshole. 

Of course, like any good “rich people bad” movie, the wealthy have to have dislikable personalities on top of having money and privilege, so that it feels justified to the audience when the rich people lose everything and the poor person comes out on top in the end. As the summer at Saltburn progresses, I got a better taste of the entire Catton dynamic and understood not only how Felix became the way he is, but how the Cattons’ collective personality flaws left an opening for Oliver to exploit. Like many excessively privileged white families, the Cattons refuse to openly talk about difficult subjects and instead use passive aggression and coercion to get their way. Elspeth uses the same manipulative tools as Felix to convince her friend Pamela, who had outstayed her welcome at Saltburn after falling on hard times, that leaving was her own idea and would be the best for everyone involved. She is comfortable controlling others for the sake of her own comfort, not because she has anything to gain from them. Elspeth is secure in her wealth and status and simply doesn’t want to be bothered with anything or anyone she dislikes.

Farleigh is just as calculating, but it’s because as an outsider, as an American, and as the only person of color in the family, he has so much to lose if he doesn’t play the Cattons’ games and keep in their good graces. The family pays for his tuition and occasionally sends money to his struggling mother, who is Elspeth’s sister. Farleigh does not cope well with the possibility of losing his access to Saltburn, and his behavior becomes more openly antagonistic. When Felix refuses to send any more money to Farleigh’s mother despite Farleigh’s insistence that she can’t pay her rent, Farleigh accuses him of being racist to his side of the family and Saltburn’s Black servants. When Oliver convinces Felix that Farleigh was lying about the details of Venetia and Oliver’s encounter, Farleigh embarrasses Oliver in front of the entire family and their guests for the night. He fights dirty not only because it’s what he has always known- Felix tells Oliver that he, Farleigh and Venetia grew up together, thereby witnessing the same behavior patterns from Elspeth- but because he cannot afford to let Oliver to take the beneficence that allows Farleigh to live the Oxford lifestyle. 

But Oliver doesn’t have to beg for anything, as he learned quickly how to get into the family’s good graces. He feeds all of their egos with his compliments and feigned affinity for Saltburn’s artwork. Oliver dazzles them with tall tales of addiction, a subject that rich British people in the 2000s talk about with the same condescending pity that underpins the contemporary liberal term “houseless people.” He successfully turns the Cattons against each other using his personal charm combined with bizarrely overt dominant sexual manipulation. A friend of mine said that the plot of the movie was unrealistic because no one would let Oliver get away with all the things he did to the Cattons; I said I would disagree if the role had been played by someone more attractive than Barry Keoghan. I really do think conventionally attractive people can get away with a lot more sneaky bullshit due to their looks alone, but I digress. There’s debate online as to whether Oliver’s encounter with Farleigh was consensual; I personally believe it was not, but it is nonetheless a tool to eliminate dissent as Oliver gains further control over the manor.

A part of me wishes I could have gone into this movie without any knowledge of the narrative so I could have innocently experienced the final twist. I tend to hate a reveal in the last five minutes of a movie, because they almost always feel cheap and sadly, I believe this was the case for Saltburn. I can imagine that I would have felt shocked and cheated if I hadn’t known about the twist beforehand, given that the seeds of Oliver’s deceptiveness were not planted well enough to justify his entire takeover of Saltburn. The more disturbing scenes- Oliver drinking bathwater that Felix had just masturbated in, Oliver eating Venetia’s menstrual blood during their hookup, Oliver having sex with the dirt on Felix’s grave and the aforementioned sexual assault against Farleigh- had little narrative value and watching them felt almost like I was being patronized, like “Look, Gen Z, you like weird sex stuff in movies, right? You wanna see gay people do freaky shit, right?”

I purposely avoided the TikTok discourse regarding this movie, even though everything had already been spoiled for me online, so I can’t comment much about what enraptured its young audience. Many have praised the film’s depiction of the high price of obsession and envy. Others fixated on the shock value of the sexual scenes, to the point that I even started to think of this movie only as “the one where Barry Keoghan fucks a grave.” It seems to draw the same crowd who enjoys the psychological, grotesque films on the horror side of the indie movie production company A24, such as Midsommar and Pearl. When skulking around online I found Saltburn’s subreddit, which was filled with hot takes and theories regarding the film’s events and its true meaning. I think that’s why Saltburn will have a mildly pervasive impact in the canon of contemporary thrillers- the story was just compelling enough, and told just lazily enough, that people will debate about what actually happened and what it all meant for at least the next few months. 

I actually liked Saltburn more than I thought I would. It is not a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination. It was fantastically acted and shot, full of gorgeous, colorful and well-composed scenes. When watching movies I tend to focus more on dialogue and narrative than visual style, and since I had so many complicated feelings about the former, it wasn’t until the sequence of Oliver throwing the rock in the water that I had to hit pause and say to myself, “goddamn, this is a beautiful movie.” 

I love a story about a grifter, about someone who schemes and manipulates their way to the top by exploiting the vulnerabilities of those unexpecting. This movie scratches that itch for me, falling in line with Parasite and The Wolf of Wall Street to tell a story about vast amounts of wealth changing hands through deceit and con artistry. I might watch Saltburn again one day when I need to escape from the nightmare of real-life 2020s American capitalism and lounge around in the somewhat undeserved destruction of a teeny portion of fictional 2000s British capitalism. But I’ll probably skip over the bathtub scene on my next watch.