In The menuby Mark Mylod Available on Disney+ and Star+, the evil is in the food, although not one of those horror movies. In reality, he reflects on how one eats and on the way in which eating is an almost theatrical event. The production is part of a genealogy of films based on food, a subject with a great presence in the cinema. In it, the Hawthorne restaurant, which has become a conclave for demanding palates, is also a sophisticated prison. Especially when chef Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes) makes it clear that the evening’s refined selection of dishes is more than just a gastronomic curiosity.
Using the culinary world as an excuse to explore the evil is an old horror-thriller trick. Much more, as the relationship between hunger and what it can cause it becomes a destructive impulse. The menu it takes the premise to a decadent extreme, but, in essence, it is the same. The simplest and most instinctive act of all shows the human being from an almost primitive approximation. But not exactly kind.
Perspective was cleverly exploited in several of the best films in cinema history. Also in others of very low quality, but that manage in their own way to reflect on what appetite (and not only food) causes. We leave you a list of five films based on food that show the subject in all its complexity.
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When fate overtakes usby Richard Fleischer
The 1973 adaptation of the play Make room, make room!, by Harry Harrison, is a cruel dystopia that uses food as a moral dilemma. However, it is much more than a philosophical allegory or a movie based on food. In the plot, which takes place in 2022, the world is devastated by all kinds of catastrophes. Food is scarce and indeed Hunger is a constant in an age of restrictions and punishments.
But the most curious thing is that eating has become a dehumanized act. With farmland desolate and farm animals exterminated, consumption is reduced to manufactured goods. Specifically, to soylent greena food with unknown ingredients that ends up becoming the only one that the starving population has access to.
Of course, the big discovery of what the main component of the supplement is is the most terrifying moment of the film. Likewise, the one that turns history into a brutal lesson on the abuse of natural resources. This food-based movie is a classic of the sci-fi and spooky food genre.
Crudea brutal film based on food by Julia Ducournau
One of the most curious points of this film based on food is the way in which it mixes various themes with the need to eat. On the one hand, it equates the voracity of her protagonist, Justine (Garance Marillier), with the sexual awakening of adolescence. On the other, it is a careful reflection on the desire for the forbidden. Between the two, production turns appetite into a sign of rebellion and dissatisfaction.
Touching the subject of cannibalism will never be easy, but Crude he does it skillfully. In particular, when he explores the sense of the hunger for flesh — human — as an expression of the urge for power. Of course, apart from all its metaphors, this is a horror movie. Based on “food”, it uses gore to turn eating into a bloody battle to survive.
Justine discovers that consuming others — in the symbolic as well as the real sense — is a message. From her subconscious? In an urgent way? The film does not explain it and, by its end, the only thing that is clear is that hunger can be a threat. An idea that gravitates over the plot throughout the entire footage.
To the Bones: Bones and Allby Luca Guadagnino
Apparently, the theme of cannibalism goes a long way and, on this occasion, it even covers the exploration of the limits and scope of existentialist fear. This very strange version of Romeo and Juliet, with human flesh involved, is a film based on food that is balanced between two different premises.
On the one hand, the perception of creatures destined for absolute and inevitable solitude by being unique. On the other, how hunger must be satisfiedwhatever your goal.
The result is a tale of listless, gentle, guilt-ridden monsters who travel across North America in search of relief. At the same time, love has become a primary longing that becomes unstoppable as the plot progresses. The director manages to build a perspective on the desire wrapped in the idea of a terrifying need. All in the setting of a romantic story with a devastating ending.
Gourmet FluxPeter Strickland’s uncomfortable film based on food
This food-based horror movie is uncomfortable from start to finish. Not only because of its central premise — that of an institute dedicated to exploring food from the grotesque — but because of how it is shown. The director creates a space in which the bodily sounds caused by food become a disgusting symphony for which there is no explanation. At the same time, it shows the ingredients of succulent preparations as forms of corporal punishment. As the footage progresses, it becomes clear that this institution dedicated exclusively to the study of hunger it is a perfidious place.
Gourmet Flux It’s not easy to explain, essentially because it’s meant to be more immersive than descriptive. During its nearly two-hour run, there are all sorts of icky reactions to the organic. Vomiting, screaming, spasms and diarrhea. A scenario in which the script tries to show that, even in such physical chaos, there is beauty.
Is right? This food-based movie doesn’t answer your central question, but one thing is clear. That history is capable of turning appetite into a type of refined torture, difficult to fully understand.
hell motelby Kevin Connor
the kitchen of motel hello cook up the most delicious burgers, steaks and deli sandwiches on North America’s forgotten trails. That is what, at least, its owner, the affable Farmer Vincent (Rory Calhoun) insists, for whom eating is a sensual act. However, not everything is so simple, and much less friendly, in this desolate place with first class dishes. Something that successive guests who stay in their rooms will discover to never leave them.
With a minimal budget — and worse taste — Connor manages to create a film based on food as a sentence. An outlandish concept that the film explores without making it entirely clear where it leads. Is it about food as a punishment? Of cannibalism transformed into redemption?
Nothing is very concrete in this disastrous journey towards the most evident gore. Despite that, the feature film has the dubious honor of using its meager resources to produce a chilling air of realism. To such an extreme that it ends up being his greatest attribute. Same with his bloody burgers. In the most literal sense of the term.