Because of the democratization of opinion via the internet, the lines between high and low art have been significantly blurred. Technology digitally bridged the proximity of each side of the culture war. All the while, the economics behind the demand for and funding of populist art slowly forces these worlds further apart. The result is Instagram accounts promoting unrealistic living standards afforded by millionaire influencers and Martin Scorsese arguing online with comic book fanboys over the value of superhero movies. These are the social dynamics that director Mark Mylod and writers Seth Reiss and Will Tracy explore within their dark comedic satire of the culinary world, “The Menu.”

Tyler (Nicholas Hoult) brings his date Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy) to an invite-only dinner prepared at an offshore, exclusive restaurant by a world-class cook named Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes). Tyler fancies himself a well-read foodie, excited by the prospects of Slowik’s famously cryptic and conceptual multi-course meal, while Margot remains skeptical. Other attendees to this island eatery include a renowned food critic named (Janet McTeer), her date (Reed Birney), a table of young venture capitalists (Rob Yang, Arturo Castro and Mark St. Cyr) and a spoiled actor (John Leguizamo), who wants to start a food-travel program for television.

As the night carries on, the courses of the meal become more personalized to the individual patrons, and Slowik reveals his sinister plan behind the narrative of the supper.

Mylod uses a single location — with a few exteriors — to his advantage to build a sense of both isolation and paranoia. One by one, each guest is forced to come to terms with radical displays of violence and theatrical elegance, asking themselves if this is all part of the show or if something’s going wrong. It’s this stylish playfulness with audience expectations and genre-bending that allows the minimalism of the production to work psychologically. Sequences are delicately composed to show paranoid glances from one table to the other, while the dialogue captures the surface emotions that are running high.

The theatrical scene work, the meticulous mise-en-scene, along with deliberate performances by the cast, cuts through the acidic tension into subtle nodes of dry comedy wit. It’s this careful combination of emotive flavors that offers enough ironic distance to save the story from overwhelming the project with absurdity or devolving into pure horrific depravity.

I like a subversive middle finger to the bourgeois as much as the next guy, and the sardonic heights of this exercise occasionally reaches the level of “Fight Club,” “American Psycho,” or a much less literal version of the 1989 body-horror shocker, “Society.” Posers and paupers are exposed, and the metatextual dinner serves as a Willy-Wonka-style endurance test for the unwitting participants of a dehumanizing game that forces them to reconsider their meaningless, arbitrary status. And yet, there’s an unsavory after-taste of thematic hypocrisy that never settles comfortably into the narrative.

The film explicitly chooses a side, but one can easily argue against the picture for indulging in the exact kind of elitism that the writers wish to skewer. With what’s presented as a counter argument to the cultural conditions opposed by the Chef, from his point of view, at best, you can argue for defeatist nihilism or some form of objectivist libertarianism. Neither of which pairs well with the class consciousness suggested by the screenplay’s thesis.

“The Menu” is a good film, but it’s just shy of greatness due to its lack of conviction within the foundational principles of its satire. Still, Fiennes and Taylor-Joy turn out icy and intricate performances, and the outrageousness of the situation leads to bigger belly laughs as each course of the story is presented.

Grade: B

Cassidy Robinson is a former Idaho State University student with a master’s degree in film studies from Orange County’s Chapman University. He is currently working as a media journalist in Los Angeles, California.