Saltburn
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) | Release Date: November 17, 2023 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
61
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 53 Critic Reviews
Positive:
29
Mixed:
22
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
ObserverRex ReedDec 18, 2023
Gorgeously photographed by Linus Sandgren, it’s both beautifully directed and cleverly written by British Oscar-winner Emerald Fennell, who follows her highly regarded Promising Young Woman with a film of even more staggering impact. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinNov 16, 2023
Fennell has a sharp eye for outrage, and an even sharper one for hotness, crafting any number of scenarios and images here that may elicit sotto voce phwoars against your better judgement. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyMaureen Lee LenkerSep 2, 2023
The film is not for the faint of heart, but it is viscerally compelling and unafraid to luxuriate in its own elegant weirdness. Its endless visual and literary layers will bring its ardent admirers back to it again and again, because it is a triumph of the cinema of excess, in all its orgiastic, unapologetic glory. Read full review
91
The PlaylistGregory EllwoodSep 2, 2023
This is a swinging-for-the-fences with the bases-loaded type of movie. An irreverent monster of a film that leaves you buzzing. We’re talking “cinema,” baby. Read full review
88
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiNov 20, 2023
Saltburn has a brain, no doubt about it, but it also has a script that’s written in jet fuel. Read full review
85
SlashfilmJacob HallSep 28, 2023
Emerald Fennell remains a filmmaker to watch, a provocateur who's downright giddy to sit in the muck with you, teeth flashing in a deadly grin. And in Barry Keoghan, she's found a collaborator who understands her nasty sensibilities and digs in up to the hilt. Read full review
80
ABC NewsPeter TraversDec 1, 2023
Love it or loathe it—there’s no in between—Emerald Fennell’s deliciously depraved takedown of the upper classes keeps you glued to Barry Keoghan as a poorboy driven to madness and worse by a rich Adonis (Jacob Elordi) and his sweetly vampiric mom (an Oscar-ready Rosamund Pike). Read full review
80
NMEAlex FloodNov 17, 2023
Saltburn isn’t the most talked-about party of the year, but you shouldn’t miss it all the same. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesAmy NicholsonNov 17, 2023
Fennell has an ear for cadence, and her editor, Victoria Boydell, has impeccable shock-comic timing. The film is put together with precision. Read full review
80
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyNov 16, 2023
As a class satire, it reaches no conclusions. But it’s filled to the brim with darkly funny, bile-slicked revulsion. Read full review
80
Time OutPhil de SemlyenNov 8, 2023
Fennell has captured something real about these unreal people and the world they live in. Her film slices with a scalpel, peels back the layers and finds only hollowness beneath. Maybe that’s the real twist. Read full review
80
IGNMartin CarrOct 12, 2023
Aside from a few pacing issues, Saltburn delivers an uncompromising vision from Emerald Fennell, an Oscar-winning writer director with a unique voice. It not only capitalizes on the kudos she received for Promising Young Woman, but cements Barry Keoghan’s leading man status. Read full review
80
BBCNicholas BarberOct 6, 2023
If you see it as a lurid pulp fantasy rather than a penetrating satire, then Saltburn is deliriously enjoyable. It's the dialogue and the performances that clinch it. Read full review
80
TheWrapTomris LafflySep 2, 2023
In the end, Saltburn works as a distinct and wildly entertaining probe into familiar waters of privilege, rather than the definite word on it, one that reinforces Fennell as a distinguished auteur of the big and the bold even on shaky grounds. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliNov 27, 2023
I’ll be the first to admit that not everything in Saltburn works and, during some of the cringe-inducing instances when it fails, it does so rather spectacularly. Yet Emerald Fennell’s film is just bonkers enough to be wildly entertaining and completely disturbing in equal parts. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperNov 21, 2023
Writer-director Fennell, who won an Oscar for her screenplay of her film “Promising Young Woman” (2020), once again proves to be a cinematic provocateur capable of creating memorable shock-value moments, though at times the candy-colored, exquisitely staged yet often brutally ugly histrionics are more about the fireworks than substance. Read full review
75
RogerEbert.comChristy LemireNov 17, 2023
An update of “The Talented Mr. Ripley” set in the mid-aughts, “Saltburn” is deliciously, wickedly mean—seductive and often surreal—with lush production values and lacerating performances. Read full review
75
ColliderEmma KielyOct 4, 2023
Fennell’s direction outdoes her writing here, and the cinematography from Linus Sandgren is exquisite (no surprise). Read full review
70
Rolling StoneDavid FearNov 22, 2023
Come for the class warfare and the occasional shots-fired zingers about the rich being different than you and me. Stay for Keoghan twirling in circles, with nothing but shafts of late afternoon light and the entirety of what God gave him expressing the bliss of going from pretender to predator. Read full review
70
The New YorkerRichard BrodyNov 20, 2023
The implied film is better than the actual one, and the implied one is the movie I found myself imagining with fascination as Saltburn unspooled. Read full review
70
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzNov 20, 2023
I’m not sure there’s a lot more going on here than a) the ultrarich are clueless dolts and b) everyone else will do just about anything to become part of the clueless ultrarich. And it’s all so over the top, that’s all it really needs. Read full review
70
The Daily BeastNick SchagerNov 14, 2023
Never more than skin-deep and ultimately overstays its welcome but which comes alive when—especially in its latter half—it indulges in its most wildly deviant impulses. Read full review
70
Screen RantMae AbdulbakiOct 28, 2023
The film and its character dynamics are intoxicating and wildly enjoyable, almost uncomfortably so due to the nature of their entanglements. If it had been less concerned with its twists, Saltburn could have been immaculate. Read full review
70
Vanity FairRichard LawsonSep 2, 2023
Stylish and intriguing, Saltburn proves an engaging sit for the majority of its run, and thus a stumble—even a big one—can mostly be forgiven. If anything, the film makes me curious to see what Fennell might do with another classic novel. Read full review
70
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganSep 2, 2023
Fennell is in that kind of blow-it-all-up mode, and the result is a spikily entertaining, narratively rackety ride led by a formidable Barry Keoghan in devil-may-care mode. Read full review
67
Original-CinKaren GordonNov 22, 2023
As always, it’s what’s under the surface that matters. And that begins to change as the movie moves along and begins to twist and turn. And here is where the movie starts to have problems, arguably, both with the story, and in terms of tone. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreDec 5, 2023
Keoghan — as innocent or cunning, oaf or graceful dancer-in-the-near-dark, will leave you amazed at this performance and startled at just what he was willing to do to fit in in “Saltburn” — the great house or the not-quite-great movie. Read full review
63
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenNov 30, 2023
Emerald Fennell’s follow-up, as writer and director, to Promising Young Woman, Saltburn is another stylishly glib exercise, entertaining and engagingly acted until the bottom falls out. Read full review
63
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldNov 20, 2023
If atmosphere is what you want in a movie, Emerald Fennell's psychological thriller Saltburn has enough to fill a multiplex all by itself. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)Alison WillmoreNov 16, 2023
Saltburn’s seductive imagery outweighs its obvious attempts at provocation. And while it does end up making being rich look pretty sweet, that’s not exactly a revelation worth hanging a whole movie on. Read full review
60
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeNov 15, 2023
Fennell sets off in the right direction. A strong cast helps her on her way. But conviction falters long before the tables are kicked over. Read full review
60
EmpireSophie ButcherNov 14, 2023
Fennell’s second feature is both evocative and provocative, with lashings of style but questionable substance. It doesn’t stick the landing, but the ride right before the nosedive is a properly enjoyable one. Read full review
60
Total FilmKate StablesOct 4, 2023
Taking aim at England’s ruthless ruling class rather than American misogyny, it’s a glossy, wildly over-the-top satire about a working-class student’s fatal attraction to an aristo family. Saltburn is a fiercely funny watch, albeit one that doesn’t deliver on its promise quite as well as Fennell’s debut. Read full review
60
The GuardianPeter BradshawOct 4, 2023
Saltburn is an English mystery drama of the high-cheekboned upper classes, watchable but sometimes weirdly overheated and grandiose, with some secondhand posh-effect stylings, a movie derived from Evelyn Waugh and Patricia Highsmith, with a bit of Pasolini. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneySep 2, 2023
Fennell is adept at pastiche, and at least she goes for sources worth plundering. But this is a movie that’s all surface cleverness, with nothing terribly insightful to say about its rarefied milieu and those gazing in longingly from the outside. Even so, Saltburn is juicy stuff, a revenge thriller that’s often wickedly funny and wildly enjoyable. Read full review
58
ConsequenceClint WorthingtonNov 14, 2023
It’s steamy and transgressive in a straightforward way, an in-your-face bacchanal of sex and violence of the kind Fennell so delights in depicting. But as the film barrels toward its bonkers but highly predictable twist, the shine on Saltburn begins to fade. Read full review
58
IndieWireDavid EhrlichSep 2, 2023
Another smirking and vaguely satirical psycho-thriller that wants to have its cake, eat it too, and then soil the plate for good measure, Fennell’s immaculately crafted follow-up to “Promising Young Woman” might have a lot more fun pushing your buttons if it had any clue how to get under your skin. Read full review
55
Paste MagazineAnna McKibbinOct 16, 2023
Complete with MGMT tracks and low-rise jeans, Saltburn is a stylized take on the early 2000s, capturing the hollow aspirations of a generation raised on the grit and glamor of early reality TV. Read full review
50
Film ThreatAlan NgNov 30, 2023
Saltburn just goes too far, and its startling images shocked me out of the story altogether. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeMark FeeneyNov 22, 2023
It’s a movie full of grotesques behaving more or less grotesquely. There’s a school of thought that thinks unpleasantness in a movie qualifies as moral candor and high seriousness. Executed well enough and conceived imaginatively enough, it can be. Here it’s simply unpleasantness. Read full review
50
Washington PostAnn HornadayNov 21, 2023
If Fennell doesn't quite stick the landing -- if her story of striving, sexual obsession, class resentment and revenge ultimately feels puny and predictable -- she certainly has fun getting there. Read full review
50
The Associated PressJocelyn NoveckNov 21, 2023
Make no mistake, the clever writing is here, as is the style, the sleek technique, and some terrific performances (Rosamund Pike is especially delicious in a supporting role). What’s missing, or muddled, is the message — and perhaps even more, the heart. Read full review
50
TimeStephanie ZacharekNov 17, 2023
Saltburn begins with a mildly intriguing premise. But Fennell can’t seem to distinguish dark, transgressive pleasures from outright unpleasantness, and the whole enterprise ends with an acrid aftertaste. Read full review
50
Austin ChronicleJenny NulfNov 15, 2023
In the end, Saltburn doesn’t have a lot to add to the conversation Fennell keeps wanting to have about the power of white men in this world. It’s a surface-level critique of the upper class and a style-over-substance poke at the out-of-touch aristocrats and the bitter have-nots. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineMarshall ShafferNov 8, 2023
Be it sexuality, gender, class, age, or race, there’s scarcely a hot-button issue of identity that Emerald Fennell won’t invoke to amplify the stakes of an obvious metaphor. Read full review
50
The Film StageCaleb HammondSep 7, 2023
The class-satire elements within a classic insider-outsider narrative act as familiar comfort. It’s when Fennell must forge her own path in the final act that she falters. To put it simply: landing the plane is hard. Read full review
50
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 2, 2023
Fennell’s debut promised a fearless original voice and style. Saltburn certainly has attitude, but nothing new to say. Read full review
42
The A.V. ClubCourtney HowardNov 16, 2023
The handful of explicit scenes feel like they’re included solely for shock value, coming across as schlocky and inert. That’s not to say the performances are at fault. Read full review
40
The Observer (UK)Wendy IdeNov 20, 2023
There is little satisfaction to be found in the picture’s messily uninhibited climax. Read full review
40
Little White LiesHannah StrongNov 16, 2023
What begins as a genuinely entertaining and well-pitched dramedy quickly becomes ridiculous and out of touch. Read full review
40
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangSep 2, 2023
Saltburn is shocking only in its puerility. No sophomore effort should feel this sophomoric. Read full review
30
The New York TimesWesley MorrisNov 16, 2023
Saltburn is the sort of embarrassment you’ll put up with for 75 minutes. But not for 127. It’s too desperate, too confused, too pleased with its petty shocks to rile anything you’d recognize as genuine excitement. Read full review
25
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleNov 17, 2023
Saltburn is a remarkable combination of smart and stupid. Its problem is that it’s superficially smart and deeply stupid. It’s clever and amusing in 20 different ways, but when it really matters, it descends into ridiculousness. Read full review
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