Emerald Fennell’s follow-up to Promising Young Woman trades suburban revenge thriller for gothic class warfare set in a sprawling English country estate. Barry Keoghan plays Oliver Quick, an Oxford student from a modest background who falls into the orbit of the charismatic, wealthy Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi). An invitation to spend the summer at Felix’s family estate, the titular Saltburn, launches Oliver into a world of aristocratic excess where his true nature gradually reveals itself.
The film became one of the most discussed movies of late 2023, with specific scenes generating enormous conversation on social media. Community response is sharply divided: some consider it a brilliant, transgressive exploration of desire and class, while others find it stylish but hollow. Keoghan’s performance is the one thing nearly everyone agrees on.
Barry Keoghan’s Unsettling Magnetism
Keoghan’s Oliver Quick is the engine that powers Saltburn, and he delivers a performance that repays close attention. His face is constantly working, shifting between vulnerability, hunger, calculation, and something harder to name. The genius of the performance is that Keoghan never telegraphs Oliver’s interiority. Viewers spend the film trying to read him the same way the other characters do, and that uncertainty is what keeps the tension alive even in slower scenes.
Fennell’s visual sense is extraordinary. Saltburn the estate is photographed with a lush, fever-dream beauty that makes the audience understand Oliver’s seduction on a visceral level. The choice to shoot in a 4:3 aspect ratio gives the images a claustrophobic quality even when the spaces are enormous, trapping these characters inside frames that feel too tight for their sprawling privilege. The production design, costumes, and lighting all contribute to an atmosphere that’s simultaneously gorgeous and rotten.
The supporting cast brings real texture to the world. Rosamund Pike is perfectly cast as Felix’s mother, playing oblivious aristocratic cruelty with a cheerfulness that makes it worse. Richard E. Grant is quietly devastating as the patriarch who suspects more than he lets on. Jacob Elordi gives Felix a golden-boy warmth that makes his carelessness feel natural rather than villainous. The Catton family functions as a unit, each member representing a different face of inherited wealth.
Fennell also demonstrates a real gift for individual scenes that sear themselves into memory. Several sequences became instant cultural touchstones, and whatever one thinks of their purpose within the story, their craftsmanship is undeniable. She knows how to build a moment to maximum impact.
Style Over Substance at Saltburn
The most persistent criticism is that the film’s plot doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Oliver’s scheme, once fully revealed, raises logistical questions that the film doesn’t seem interested in answering. The twist reframes everything that came before, but some viewers find that the reframing makes earlier scenes less compelling rather than more, because Oliver’s apparent vulnerability was the most interesting thing about him.
The tonal shifts can feel jarring. Saltburn moves between dark comedy, erotic thriller, social satire, and gothic horror without always committing fully to any of them. Some viewers experience this as bold and unpredictable. Others find it scattered, as if Fennell is cycling through influences without synthesizing them into a unified vision.
The film’s commentary on class, while present, doesn’t cut as deep as its style promises. The Cattons are recognizable types rather than fully explored characters, and the film’s attitude toward wealth stays at the level of fascination and disgust without finding much that’s new to say about either. The comparison to Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley stories is inevitable, and it doesn’t always flatter Fennell’s script, which lacks the psychological precision of those novels.
The final act rushes toward its conclusion in a way that feels out of step with the languid pacing of everything before. Key developments happen quickly, and the emotional weight of certain events doesn’t land as fully as it should because the film hasn’t invested enough time in the relationships that are being destroyed.
The Spectacle Is the Point
Saltburn works best if you accept it as a sensory experience rather than a puzzle to solve. Fennell is less interested in airtight plotting than in creating moments of heightened feeling, and the film’s most devoted fans respond to it on that level. It’s a movie designed to make you gasp, squirm, and argue about it afterward, and by that measure it succeeds completely. The question is whether impact without depth is enough.
Should You Watch Saltburn?
If you’re drawn to films that take big swings and don’t care whether everyone connects, Saltburn is essential viewing. It’s gorgeous to look at, features a career-defining Keoghan performance, and provides enough provocative moments to fuel weeks of conversation. Viewers who loved The Talented Mr. Ripley’s blend of beauty and menace will find similar pleasures here, even if the execution is less disciplined.
Skip it if you need your thrillers to make logical sense, or if provocation without clear purpose frustrates you. The film’s most controversial scenes are presented without much context or commentary, and if that feels like shock for its own sake, you’ll spend two hours waiting for depth that doesn’t arrive.
The Verdict on Saltburn
Saltburn is Emerald Fennell operating at full visual power with a script that can’t quite match the ambition of its images. Keoghan is phenomenal, the atmosphere is intoxicating, and individual sequences hit with real force. But the story underneath all that style is thinner than it needs to be, and the class commentary never sharpens past the point of aesthetic fascination. It’s a film people will keep arguing about, which is itself a kind of achievement, even if the arguments tend to circle back to the same question: is being unforgettable enough?