*There will be some spoilers.

Saltburn. What did I think of Saltburn?

Honestly, I still don’t know. I’ve only watched it all the way through once, but I think any more watches and my judgment may be clouded due to the insane amount of Saltburn content on Tik Tok.

Here’s the thing. I liked it, I liked it… but did I love it? I don’t think so. I’ll be frank, I’m not overly keen on Barry Keoghan. That’s not to say I don’t think he’s absolutely brilliant, but I just don’t like him. This is possibly due to my boyfriend showing me a deeply upsetting clip of his turn as the Joker in Robert Pattinson’s Batman. I do not like Batman, but I’m not going to go into the details of why. All jokes aside, Keoghan is fantastically creepy and went all out for Saltburn. The only other complaint I have about him (I apologise to all the Barry Keoghan girlies, I love you all) is that this man does not look like a uni student. He’s just too weathered and too adult, and that is absolutely not an insult. He looks his age, as he should!!

Anyway, back to the film, because I’m a complete idiot apparently, and despite the fact I had a feeling Keoghan’s Oliver was going to turn bad, I felt so sorry for him at the start of the film. I really felt for him. I felt for him so much that while watching the little montage of his friendship with Felix growing, the parties, “deep” chats, etc., I was in TEARS. I remember what it was like starting university, which was terrifyingly almost ten years ago for me. Everything feels so intense, scary, exhilarating, miserable. I remember the feeling of realising I’d been accepted, for the most part. What a f***ing feeling. I think that little montage might have been my favourite part of the film, therefore I was disappointed (but not surprised) at the sh*tshow that followed.

The first half of the film is extremely slow. Stuff is happening, of course, but not really happening. I feel like the main aim of the first half is to establish Oliver (complete bollocks, of course) as a shy and retiring working class bloke who is accepted into hot-rich-boy-with-an-eyebrow-piercing Felix’s fold. I didn’t really question that this was the truth before the car scene. I thought it was going to be an eat-the-rich thing. Anyway, in terms of plot, what follows was not really surprising to me. They cleverly showed Oliver sinking his teeth into these overly trusting, quirky rich people one by one. It’s nicely done, I liked it. The chaos that takes place at Saltburn was an understated kind of chaos, mostly very British and polite.

I was surprised by all the discourse about the bathtub scene – yeah, it’s gross but is it really that bad?! More offensive was possibly the grave scene, but I found this faintly amusing more than anything else. Everyone’s saying it, and they’re right, Barry Keoghan gave it his all and for this I must commend him. Shoutout to his strange hybrid accent also, which I did not notice once during the film until some friends of mine mentioned it during a rewatch of some clips. When I got to the last part, I kind of just accepted the murders because, again, I saw it coming. This dude is creepy. The Catton’s all die in *mysterious* circumstances and Oliver takes over the house. That’s it. It wasn’t underwhelming, but I wasn’t blown away. This dude was on his friend’s grave BUTT-NAKED, what did you expect?

Onto the actors. Firstly I would like to mention one of my favourite famous humans to walk the earth who is always insanely excited to be doing anything at all, Richard E. Grant. He was just perfect for this film, a complete oddball offset perfectly by Rosamund Pike who was the real star of the show for me. She had some excellent one-liners. I’ve never been a huge fan of Jacob Elordi but I feel more favourable towards him after Saltburn. In comparison to his other characters, Felix seemed quite sweet. Alison Oliver was good also but didn’t blow me away, and Archie Madekwe made Farleigh remarkably annoying to watch which I believe is the point.

For me one of the main draws of this film is how it looks. It’s gorgeous, sumptuous, effortlessly cool. I didn’t come away thinking how profound it all was, but I don’t know if that was the point. The word I’d use to describe Saltburn is fun. The soundtrack was excellent – Murder on the Dancefloor is an earworm from my childhood school discos – and the costumes were extremely Halloween costume-worthy. I don’t want to say the film is over-hyped, but I think a lot of the hype is over things that were included probably for shock value more than anything else. Would we all be talking about it so feverishly if Oliver hadn’t been drinking bathwater and gyrating naked on his mate’s place of rest? I liked that stuff, but I’m not sure how much is really going on beneath the surface. Overall, Saltburn was a bit of fun. Sexy people, good music, boujie mansion, pervy bathwater-drinking, and a few murders.

Maybe the point of the film was the naked dancing scene at the end, and if it was, sign me up. I could do a rewatch.

*if you have Amazon Prime, you can watch this for free. Barry Keoghan girlies, thank me later.