Review: Is Saltburn an Eat-the-Rich Comedy? Not Quite.

Critics are misreading the movie. The wealthy are not the villains in this story.

After a not-quite accidental encounter, an unassuming Oxford student named Ollie (Barry Keoghan) befriends a popular classmate, the handsome and wealthy Felix (Jacob Elordi). Felix invites Ollie to spend the summer with him at Saltburn, his eccentric family's opulent mansion in the English countryside. Murder and madness ensue.

Critics correctly noted that Amazon Prime Video's Saltburn bears a striking resemblance to another film that depicts an ingratiating young man's quest for social acceptance (and it's a mild spoiler to mention this, so be warned): The Talented Mr. Ripley. But as far as the film's message is concerned, the critics wildly missed the mark, describing Saltburn as an eat-the-rich comedy that "skewers" the ultra-wealthy and rejoices in "class war."

This interpretation could not be more wrong. Felix and his family are not villains—they are victims of scheming outsiders who covet all they have and seek to destroy it. If anything, the rich people in the film are toonice and generous; they should have thrown Ollie out on day one. Forget Ripley; Saltburn has much more in common with the critically acclaimed but widely misinterpreted Parasite, in which a wealthy Korean household is preyed upon by a lower-class family (the eponymous parasites). Both films are, if anything, reactionary, something almost no one seems to have noticed.