I can’t get over how misunderstood Saltburn is. I just googled some articles about it and many people mentioned about how this is an eat-the-rich story. But that’s not really what this film is doing (at least that’s what I get). Class is there, yes, but it’s not the point. This is a movie about a messy, obsessive, consuming kind of desire and how it mutates into something darker.

I mean just look at Oliver’s background. He’s not only lied to Felix and his family, he also manipulated the viewers since the very beginning. The look and gesture of ‘innocent’, ‘harmless’, ‘geeky’, ‘nerdy’ type of man he brought to the table since the beginning? That’s so wild.

And the film isn’t subtle about it either, which I actually love. Venetia (Felix’s sister) basically spells it out during the bathtub scene: Oliver is a moth to the flame of beautiful, brilliant people. At the same time, he’s quietly destroying the family from within. Felix, with all his effortless charm, brought down by his own need to save someone.

It leans into that mix of the grotesque and the beautiful without apology, which is why scenes like the graveyard moment feel shocking but totally intentional. Oliver isn’t some social revolutionary, he’s much closer to a modern Heathcliff: driven by longing, resentment, and obsession.

And visually, it has this glossy, early-2000s sensuality, very Cruel Intentions, that makes everything feel seductive and slightly dangerous.

What I find most interesting is Oliver himself. He’s not an outsider in the way people frame him. Yes, he’s a scholarship student, but he comes from a stable, comfortable background (THIS SHOCKED ME BCS AT 1/2 FILM I REALLY THOUGHT THIS WAS GOING TO BE EAT THE RICH MOVIE). He’s not driven by deprivation, he’s driven by dissatisfaction. He finds his own life, even his loving parents, unbearably ‘not enough’, ‘not interesting’. That’s what he really resents. Not just wealth, but the lack of edge in the people who have it.

He doesn’t want to tear this world down bcs he wants in. More than that, he’s just not only loved Felix, he wants to be Felix, or maybe even consume what Felix represents. That tension between wanting someone and wanting to become them is a crazy proxy bruh. It’s why the film feels so voyeuristic, like you’re watching something you shouldn’t be, but can’t look away from.

The structure of the film mirrors that obsession. It starts with that almost indirect intimacy in the bathtub scene, escalates into something freakier by destroying a whole family, then turns into possessive and disturbing with Felix’s death, and then ends with that final, unhinged release, Oliver alone, fully in control, finally “owning” the world he was desperate to enter. That final dance of ‘victory’ is insaneee. I’ve been scared with Barry Keoghan in The Killing of a Sacred Deer. This time he got me scared again (and he dressed up as a deer too in this film sooo). He’s a very gorgeous, ultrapotential actor who can play a TOTAL FREAK GUY. I would like to see him being freakier plsss.

Finally, calling it empty also just feels like a misread (istg i really saw reviews that said so). The substance is there, it’s just not packaged as a straightforward social critique bcs it’s actually not focusing deeply into that direction???. It’s more about this madness, about longing for beauty, power, and proximity to something dazzling, and how that longing can twist into something monstrous (especially when you’re a sociopath or a pathological liar).

THIS IS SO FREAKIN GOOD I LOVE THIS SO MUCH. MAYBE I JUST CLICKED WITH EMERALD FENNELL AT THIS POINT BECAUSE I LOVE HER PREVIOUS WORKS, ALSO WUTHERING HEIGHTS TOO (THE ONE THAT GOT MANY NEGATIVE PERSPECTIVE). I kinda know that Fennell is so much into lavishness, extravagance, luxury, maximalism, i love all the setup & settings in both of her films soooo much, i love her ‘goth’ side inside her brain.