The Point of ‘Saltburn’ Isn’t What You Think It Is

I had a grand old time watching Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn” at a critics’ screening before the general public got to it, which means I was mostly unspoiled by discourse. This enjoyment came as a surprise: I did not much like “Promising Young Woman,” the writer-director’s previous, Oscar-winning outing, which aimed too high and landed with a thud. A critic should enter every movie with as blank a slate of expectations as possible. Still, for “Saltburn,” my internal eyebrow came pre-cocked.

But it was sumptuous. It was silly. “No, Barry, no,” I murmured, giggling, when Barry Keoghan’s Oliver stood over that grave, contemplating the unspeakable. It was a movie about a middle-class kid who went home with his posh friend for summer vacation, slowly revealing himself to be a monster, and it was blatantly ridiculous. I loved watching it, feeling the sort of glee usually set off by a Skittles binge. As a devotee of two weird genres in particular — gothic campus yarns and “great house” tales — I just lapped it up. (So to speak.)

In the intervening months, “Saltburn” has received an outsized amount of attention. It did respectably in its theatrical release, buoyed by a younger demographic in love with Jacob Elordi, a star of “Euphoria.” Critics compared it, unfavorably, with “Brideshead Revisited” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” citing its mishandling of class anxiety, its failure to adequately excoriate the rich and, perhaps most of all, the feeling that it was trying too hard to be shocking.

Then, just before Christmas, “Saltburn” dropped on Amazon Prime Video. It became a bona fide viral hit, with word of mouth making it one of the streamer’s biggest debuts. TikTok users turned it into memes, (sort of) recreating the final scene scored to Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder on the Dance Floor,” which, in turn, shot up to No. 1 on Spotify’s Viral 100 chart. Keoghan and Elordi flirted their way through the press tour, fanning the internet’s flames. You could even buy a Jacob Elordi’s Bathwater candle. (To borrow internet slang, IYKYK.)

People keep talking about it, so I keep thinking about why I enjoy it so much, even though many of the criticisms leveled at it (as in my colleague Wesley Morris’s review) are not, strictly speaking, wrong.