Saltburn Movie Review - You all said it was gross?

I just watched the 2023 movie that surprised everyone when it debuted, which is the movie Saltburn. To be honest, I hadn’t heard of Saltburn nor have I watched the trailers before I heard about it online. Most of what I heard were things along the line of, “The most disgusting movie ever!” and “Vomit-inducing!!!”

So I went to the parental guide, obviously, and checked the only section I’m ever sensitive about [Sex & Nudity]. I did a quick skim over it, including the spoiler sections, and thought to myself, That doesn’t seem too bad? Maybe it’s worse in the movie?

With most shock/gross movies, the main review from the audience is usually just “It’s really gross.” I don’t care for that at all. I love subversive, I love shocking. However, films such as A Serbian Film, Human Centipede, Salo (and any movie with a title like Puke Girl Shit Holocaust *slur* Murder, really) are not interesting to me. What is the point of shock, if not to make us think about something? If not to be part of a bigger whole?

This is a tangent but whenever I look at lists or watch youtube videos talking about the most disturbing films ever, it often feels like they’re teetering between the lines of film and snuff. Whenever I think of a disturbing movie, I think A Tale of Two Sisters, Possession, Possum, Mysterious Skin, Midsommar, Perfect Blue, etc. These are movies that use their shock content in order to heighten either a theme in the story or even as a form of catharsis. When I watch a video talking about “The Most Disturbing Film Ever Made” and they describe the movie as an hour of shock content, I can’t help but ask why? What is the point in seeing OOOO get OOOO then have OOOO? And in more egregious cases, is it worth putting the child actors through all of that?

Anyway, it was intriguing to see people review this movie with phrases like, “An amazing movie, if you can stomach it.”

I’ll stomach it, I thought, the parent guide didn’t seem that bad. I’ll just close it if it gets to be too much.

I wasn’t too sure what I was expecting. But I definitely wasn’t expecting A Midsummer’s Night's dream, set in the 2000's.

We open with a montage of Jacob Elordi (known on the internet as babygirl) and a man repeatedly saying, “I loved him.” Then fast cuts of scenes from the movie until it suddenly cuts to the title screen set to the royal family’s coronation music.

(As a side note : Hearing Jacob Elordi with a British accent is quite funny.)

We find that the man confessing his love is Oliver. Oliver is an impoverished student starting his year at Oxford. He’s isolated from the other students and has a hard time making friends.

He encounters Jacob Elordi (who we will now call Felix, his in-movie character name.) After Oliver helps Felix with a bike incident, the two quickly become friends. Oliver talks about his family, his parents being drug-dealer addicts who have a ton of mental health issues.

After Oliver's dad dies, Felix invites him to his family's house, a humongous mansion with tons of staff. Crazy. The building is really pretty though. Over the course of his stay, we watch as Oliver acts... stranger and stranger? It seems as though he's become obsessed with Felix. Culminating in the only gross scene that I found a bit puke inducing, him drink Felix's bathwater.
Okay...
Fun fact, that scene has inspired various candles and drinks alike. Very Belle Delphine of the internet.

When Felix tries to surprise him with a visit to his estranged mother, we find out that Oliver was lying all along. He lives in the suburbs, in a middle-class family. Upset by this, Felix begins to cut off Oliver, driving him to insanity.

So anyway, he slowly kills off each family member.

Starting with Felix, who he poisons.
After Felix's funeral btw, Oliver fucks his grave. Well, more like the soil on top of his grave.
Naked and everything.
Yeah. Hearing it from the internet, I thought it'd be grosser but it just seemed to me like a horrific portayal of grief.
RIP Mary Shelley and Emily Bronte. You would have loved this.

Then he kills the matriach, Elspeth Catton, who is too good-natured and naive for her own good. Before her death, with all of her close family gone, she bequeaths both the Saltburn Manor and the Catton family fortune to Oliver.

Overall, I think it was a very fun thriller. The disgusting scenes weren't actually that bad but I think I've read far too many books. 8.5/10