Emerald Fennell’s rapid ascent in contemporary cinema established her as a formidable auteur, primarily driven by her Academy Award-winning feature directorial debut, Promising Young Woman (2020). Produced by LuckyChap Entertainment – the production banner spearheaded by Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley, and Josey McNamara – the film cemented Fennell’s reputation for executing candy-coloured, razor-sharp satires that meticulously subvert audience expectations. However, her sophomore effort, the 2023 psychological thriller Saltburn, has fractured critical consensus and generated fierce debate. While Promising Young Woman operated as a precision-guided, 113-minute critique of institutional sexism and rape culture, Saltburn pivots towards a decadent, albeit ideologically murky, examination of the British class system. Co-produced by LuckyChap Entertainment alongside MRC and Lie Still, Saltburn replaces the neon-lit revenge arc of its predecessor with an opulent, gothic descent into aristocratic debauchery, leaving audiences and critics questioning the trajectory and discipline of Fennell’s cinematic voice.
Fennell’s debut, Promising Young Woman, was a masterclass in economic, high-impact filmmaking. Shot entirely on location in Los Angeles over a highly condensed 23-day schedule, the production navigated a lean $10 million budget. Despite these logistical and financial constraints, Fennell famously insisted on a highly intentional, stylised aesthetic, stating, “It’s a very, very low budget movie that we shot in 23 days, and we were determined to make it look as cinematic as possible.” The film stars Carey Mulligan as Cassie Thomas, a 30-year-old former medical student enacting a methodical, trauma-fueled vengeance against predatory men following the suicide of her best friend, Nina. The project’s subversion of the traditional rape-revenge genre, cloaked in a pastel colour palette and a bubblegum-pop soundtrack featuring Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind”, resonated deeply with both audiences and the Academy. Released during the restrictive theatrical environment of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2020, Promising Young Woman still managed to gross an impressive $18.9 million worldwide. The financial success was compounded by its critical triumph, earning five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, and securing Fennell the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The film’s thematic clarity and unyielding moral compass established an exceptionally high bar for Fennell’s subsequent projects.
In stark contrast to the Californian urgency and contemporary setting of her debut, Saltburn shifts the geographic and cultural focus to the elite echelons of the United Kingdom, specifically the 2006 environments of Oxford University and the sprawling Northamptonshire countryside. The production budget for Saltburn expanded notably, with industry estimates placing the cost between $10 million and $38 million. To capture the claustrophobic opulence of the titular estate, Fennell secured Drayton House, a 130-room, 14th-century Grade I listed property located near the village of Lowick. The estate, which has remained within the Stopford Sackville family since 1770, was a strategic and highly guarded selection; Fennell specifically chose Drayton House because it had never previously been photographed or utilised for film production, thereby preserving an authentic aura of exclusivity and mystery. To heighten the visual confinement, cinematographer Linus Sandgren shot the film in an academy 1.33:1 aspect ratio on 35mm Kodak film stock, deliberately constraining the visual field to amplify the suffocating, voyeuristic tension within the grand architectural spaces of the house.
At the narrative core of Saltburn is the parasitic relationship between Oxford scholarship student Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) and the aristocratic, perpetually bored Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi). Invited to spend the summer at the Catton family estate, Oliver systematically infiltrates and dismantles the eccentric, deeply flawed family unit. The ensemble cast is anchored by Rosamund Pike’s scene-stealing performance as the family matriarch, Elspeth Catton, a former model whose oblivious privilege is encapsulated in lines such as, “Oh, but, darling, you’re kind about everyone. You can’t be trusted.” The film’s escalating sequence of transgressions – which includes Oliver drinking Felix’s bathwater from a plug hole, engaging in menstrual vampirism, and performing necrophilic acts atop a freshly dug grave – generated significant online discourse and polarised critical reception. Reflecting on the intense public reaction to the film’s explicit sequences, Elordi remarked, “I didn’t think it was so extreme. I found the world’s reaction to be slightly prudish, actually.”
While the provocative elements of Saltburn secured substantial internet virality and TikTok trends, driving the film to a $21.1 million worldwide box office gross, critics have relentlessly questioned the substantive depth beneath the shock value. The primary critique levelled against Saltburn is its perceived lack of a coherent ideological target. Unlike the surgical precision of Promising Young Woman, which systematically dismantled the specific mechanics of complicity and the “nice guy” trope, Saltburn’s commentary on wealth and class division feels remarkably scattershot and shallow. Observers have drawn inevitable structural comparisons to Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley and Evelyn Waugh’s 1945 classic Brideshead Revisited, yet Saltburn frequently prioritises aesthetic indulgence over psychological complexity. The Catton family – including Richard E. Grant as Sir James and Alison Oliver as Venetia – rather than serving as fully realised avatars of aristocratic corruption, often teeter into one-dimensional caricatures of snobbery and entitlement. Consequently, Oliver’s ultimate destruction of the family lacks the cathartic or politically resonant impact of Cassie’s crusade in Promising Young Woman. Critics argue that Saltburn relies too heavily on empty provocations, deploying taboo subjects more as stylistic accessories than as integral narrative devices with meaningful consequences.
The film’s tonal inconsistencies further complicate its reception. Fennell attempts to balance dark comedy, gothic horror, and a nostalgic mid-2000s pastiche, but the synthesis is frequently abrasive. The film’s soundtrack, which heavily features tracks like Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder on the Dancefloor”, MGMT’s “Time to Pretend”, and The Killers’ “Mr. Brightside”, explicitly anchors the narrative in 2006, yet the film often fails to establish a unifying atmospheric consistency. This stylistic turbulence is a significant departure from the tightly controlled, hyper-feminine horror aesthetic that made Promising Young Woman so uniquely effective. Where Cassie’s pastel nurse costume and rainbow manicures were deployed as specific weapons of subversion, Saltburn’s visual cues often feel like unmoored aesthetic choices rather than deliberate tools for storytelling. Alternative Best Films of 2023: From Barbie to Asteroid City provides further context on the diverse cinematic landscape of that year, illustrating how other directors, from Greta Gerwig to Wes Anderson, successfully merged highly distinct visual styles with robust narrative substance.
Despite the critical division and accusations of superficiality, Saltburn undeniably penetrated the cultural zeitgeist, a phenomenon discussed extensively in Exploring Saltburn: The Surprising Rise of an Indie Film in Awards Season. The film’s trajectory through the 2023 and 2024 awards circuit highlights the film industry’s conflicted response to Fennell’s evolving style. While Promising Young Woman was an undeniable Oscar darling, Saltburn faced a significantly more challenging path, ultimately failing to secure a single Academy Award nomination. However, it found much stronger footing on home soil with the British Academy. As detailed in BAFTA Film Awards 2024: The Winners and Highlights, Saltburn garnered five BAFTA nominations, including Outstanding British Film, Best Original Score for Anthony Willis, and acting nods for Keoghan, Pike, and Elordi. This divergence in transatlantic awards recognition underscores the film’s specific cultural resonance within the UK, where its acidic depiction of the rigid class system, Oxford elitism, and the crumbling aristocracy struck a more immediate chord, even if the thematic execution remained hotly debated.
Ultimately, Saltburn stands as a fascinating, deeply flawed follow-up to a groundbreaking debut. Emerald Fennell’s willingness to swing for the fences, armed with a larger budget, exclusive locations like Drayton House, and an uncompromised vision, is commendable in an era increasingly dominated by risk-averse studio filmmaking. However, the film’s heavy reliance on sensationalism over structural integrity exposes the critical limitations of provocation without an underlying purpose. Promising Young Woman succeeded brilliantly because its shocking moments were tethered to a profound, righteous anger and a clear social critique; Saltburn falters because its visceral shocks exist largely in a vacuum, serving a narrative that concludes with the cynical, flattened assertion that everyone is simply awful and self-serving. As Fennell continues to develop her directorial portfolio, Saltburn will likely be remembered not as a cohesive masterpiece, but as a necessary, messy stepping stone – a visually intoxicating 131-minute experiment that proves that while a filmmaker can easily buy exclusive access to a 14th-century estate and top-tier Kodak film stock, narrative cohesion and moral clarity remain far more elusive commodities.
