Between The Bear, The Menu, Boiling Point and now House Of Spoils, it has never looked less appetising to be a chef. What's coming to our screens is back-breaking, stressful work judged by ungrateful customers and snooty critics. As a celebrated New York chef-patron tells us in House Of Spoils’ opening scene, “To be a chef, you've got to love the taste of blood. You've got to love the fight.” And then follows that ominous advice with a line that would have even Remy from Ratatouille abandoning his aprons: “I gotta remember to not just cook with my head but with my balls.”
Unsanitary cooking advice and toxic workplaces aside, things get considerably worse for House Of Spoils’ Chef (Ariana DeBose). Nefarious forces set upon her new rural fine-dining restaurant, and having employees that can't tell a monkfish from a chicken prove to be least of her problems.
The more classically horror elements are too tame to be effective jump scares.
Much like a deflating soufflé or a split emulsion, the balance is off with Blumhouse's latest horror fare. The more classically horror elements are too tame to be effective jump scares and too silly to be elegantly gothic. Scenes that tease out Chef's toxic dynamics with her talented but inexperienced sous chef Lucia (Barbie Ferreira) and obnoxious investor (Succession's Arian Moayed) prove far more compelling than the plagues of insects and malevolent sorcery that dominate the film’s third act.
This lack of balance is a worrying trend within the horror genre’s recent fare that even the normally reliably grisly Blumhouse is evidently not immune to, where films come across as embarrassed to be horror movies. There is such care and exquisite craft in each shot of a risotto being plated or a carrot being chopped and such palpable tension in the kitchen scenes, while when Chef is coming across rotting corpses and spooky underground tunnels, the film and its protagonist seem palpably bored. Writer-directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy seemed far more in their comfort zone with previous thriller Blow The Man Down, and while there are plenty of tense thrills to be found when DeBose tries to get through a stressful service, it’s a shame that as it moves into horror, House Of Spoils becomes a decent snack rather than a delectable extravaganza.