This movie was style over substance. The cinematography was beautiful and interesting but the script lacked direction and the dialogue was trying way too hard to be quirky instead of actually just being quirky. I cannot blame the actors on this one, because they hired a slew of very talented actors that i've seen be great in their other works.

Story-wise, this is the same plot as 'The Talented Mr. Ripley.' Except that movie has Matt Damon charming everyone to get into the inner circle. It also has a very deliberate and shocking tone shift going from being leisurely to violent. It works because the audience does not see it coming.

Here, it seems Emerald Fennell didn't know what she was trying to say with this story. Is she saying poor people are evil, manipulative, and after rich people's money? Is she saying rich people are eccentric, but overall so kind that it is to their detriment? Is she saying gay sexuality is dangerous and disturbing? Is she making a point about lower classes mixing with higher classes ending in disaster? None of these themes are particularly productive. In fact, broken down like this, it seems like conservative propaganda. So Fennell is either out of touch with the real world or completely oblivious to how her story comes across.

Watching 'Talented Mr. Ripley' in 2023 would make most of us cringe, because we realize that depicting homosexuality in this obsessive, violent way is adding to the homophobic rhetoric that there is something wrong/bad/dangerous with being gay. It isn't to say that gay people can't ever be the villain, but the movie came at a time when the media was full of gay panic and depictions were either negative or stereotypes. It is really unbelievable that in 2023, Fennell would take the exact same premise for her movie and not have the insight to recognize she should use her version to fix that stereotype. Instead, we get the grave scene, further cementing that gayness is weird and the worst thing that can happen is a gay guy having a crush on you. Because that means he will kill you and have sex with your grave. Lovely.

All of the characters are very flat. We do not know their motivations at all:

-We are told that felix is popular and well-liked by his peers. Why? Is he trying to be this way? Is he a people-pleaser? Is being popular or center of attention important to him? What is his relationship with his parents? We see them together in scenes but there is zero indication one way or another how they feel about each other.

-Why is Farleigh so antagonistic toward Oliver? Being American and also being that he would at some point return to america, it seems he would care the LEAST about British class politics or what Oliver is doing with his cousin's family. Why does he even care? Yet he spends the entire movie mocking oliver for not being 'one of them.' Does he have a crush on Oliver? Does he suspect Oliver is in love with Felix? We see none of these things, yet Farleigh repeats the same classist speech every time he sees Oliver. He is the MOST openly hateful toward Oliver, yet he is the one person Oliver DOESN'T kill.

-What's going on with the parents? What makes Elspeth attach herself to Oliver after her son's death? What makes the father shun him? We never get good reasons because we dont know these characters at all. What was the meaning behind Elspeth keeping that woman around because she was pretty? And what is the meaning of rudely suggesting to her that she should leave? If she overstayed her welcome, what did she do that offended Elspeth so?

It seems the movie does not have any answers for who any of these characters are, only HAHA, ECCENTRIC, AMIRIGHT?

Overall, this seems like a movie obsessed with breaking barriers when in fact it had the most predictable formula, with super regressive messaging and a lazy, meandering script. ("I don't know, you make my blood run cold"??? That's all you got for the climactic confrontation between your two main characters??)

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