Anya Taylor-Joy’s Brutal Dark Comedy Is Trending On Streaming
Anya Taylor-Joy's The Menu is the current most-watched movie on HBO Max.
Anya Taylor-Joy is not afraid to bring the scares and fans love her for it. This is evident by the success of her latest movie, The Menu, which is a streaming hit in several countries, including the United States. FlixPatrol shows it ranked as #1 at home and in the top three in most other countries, including Ireland, Italy, Canada, Poland, and the United Kingdom.
The Menu is a dark comedy-horror that also stars Ralph Fiennes, Nicholas Hoult, and Hong Chau in a diabolic plot surrounding a world-famous chef and his privileged clientele. Anya Taylor-Joy plays Margot, a young woman invited to the exclusive restaurant of Julian Slowik, where each course of the meal is more disturbing than the last. Nicholas Hoult, known for playing Beast in the Marvel Cinematic Universe X-Men movies, plays Margot’s wealthy date Tyler, and Hong Chau plays Elsa, Chef Slowik’s maitre d’.
This measure of the movie’s popularity comes days after it was released on HBO Max on January 3. The Menu is also still in theaters but will be released on digital media such as DVD and Bluray on January 17. It is the widest theatrical release to date from distributor Searchlight Pictures, but it paid off by earning nearly $75 million at the box office since its November 18 opening. Critics liked it as much as fans seem to, rating it 89% on Rotten Tomatoes and 71 of 100 on Metacritic.
Anya Taylor-Joy has become an A-lister since her breakout role in 2015’s A24 period horror The VVitch. She appeared in the two Unbreakable sequels from M Night Shyamalan, Split and Glass, but the next step on her path to superstardom was the 2020 Netflix limited series The Queen’s Gambit, which made everyone want to learn to play chess just like her character Beth Harmon. The same year, she played the titular character of Jane Austen’s Emma, and this year has also appeared in Amsterdam and The Northman, making period pieces more than half her resume.
Ralph Fiennes is an Oscar nominee with the kind of sinister presence that made him shine as characters like Nazi war criminal Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List. Perhaps most famously he is Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies, despite also portraying innovative inventor M in the Daniel Craig James Bond movies Skyfall, Spectre, and No Time to Die. His presence as a villain is the kind of powerful counterpoint needed for a strong actress like Anya Taylor-Joy.
Nicholas Hoult is best known for his role as Hank McCoy, the intelligent scientist who turns into the Beast in the modern X-Men franchise. In this capacity, he also appeared briefly in Deadpool 2, but also has a pair of creepy vampire movies coming up, including the Nicolas Cage comedy Renfield. He will also be in Nosferatu, a new project from The VVitch and The Northman director Robert Eggers, which means there is a distinct possibility that Anya Taylor-Joy could wind up involved with the project.
Catch The Menu on HBO Max and watch Anya Taylor-Joy match wits with Ralph Fiennes in the #1 movie on the streaming channel.
