Anya Taylor-Joy Has The #1 Movie On Streaming
Anya Taylor-Joy's darkly comic The Menu is the number one movie on HBO Max.
Anya Taylor-Joy has had a successful career as a modern scream queen, starting out in The Witch, Morgan, and Split within five years of when she started acting. According to FlixPatrol, the gorgeous star’s latest horror comedy, The Menu, is the number one film on HBO Max, for a second time. Given the box office failures of The Northman and Amsterdam, the Forbes 30 Under 30 winner scored a surprise hit with the bizarre film about a murderous chef.
The Menu is about a group of diners that venture to a private island for an exclusive dinner hosted by Chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes). Tyler Ledford (Nicholas Hoult) brings along Margot Mills (Anya Taylor-Joy) as his date for the dinner, which starts mildly unsettling when Slowik introduces the dishes. The unsettling feeling is amplified when the guests deep secrets are found engraved on tortillas during the third course, including one of the guests outed as an embezzler, and another being part of an affair.
Following a suicide in the fourth course, the real intention of Slowik’s dinner becomes clear, leading to the guests and staff being kept on the island against their will. The rapidly deteriorating situation is amazingly over-the-top with Ralph Fiennes deranged acting earning him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor. Matching the scene-stealing Chef’s intensity, Anya Taylor-Joy was also nominated at the Golden Globes for Best Actress.
Anya Taylor-Joy’s Margot has her own deep secrets which come out, but to reveal more would be to spoil the delightfully dark horror comedy that constantly toes the line between eliciting screams and laughter. The two leads weren’t the only ones to earn nominations as the cast was up for Best Ensemble at the San Diego Film Critics Society while the Hollywood Critics Association nominated The Menu as “Best Comedy.”
Movie-goers agreed with the critics, as Rotten Tomatoes shows the film with an 88 percent fresh rating and a 76 percent audience score. Commonly referred to as a dark satire about the consumption of art in today’s culture, The Menu has all the hallmarks of a low-key theatrical success. Instead, the movie made just under $80 million during its run against a budget of $30 million, making it Anya Taylor-Joy’s most critically and financially successful film of the last year.
Director Mark Mylod encouraged the cast to ad-lib while on set, which led to moments like John Leguizamo’s washed-up movie character making references to playing a chef in one of his movies. That’s a veiled reference from the Violent Night star to Steven Seagal‘s role in Under Siege, an actor that Leguizamo has gone on record as being a “horrible human being.” Anya Taylor-Joy also wasn’t the first choice for the female lead as she took voer the role from Emma Stone after the Easy A actress dropped due to scheduling conflicts.
The Menu is a brisk thriller with more laughs than would be expected from a film about a psychotic Chef and well worth checking out on HBO Max. Anya Taylor-Joy’s next big film is the upcoming Mad Mad Fury Road prequel, Furiosia, where she plays a younger version of Charlize Theron’s character.
