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
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