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There have been many films that have attempted to take the concept of working in a kitchen as either a head chef or a hired hand and combine it with the horror genre. Some have been very successful and some have, for lack of a better way of saying it, been overcooked. The thought process behind the combination is built on solid ground, working in a kitchen is after all a nightmare. If you’ve never had the pleasure of working in a high stakes kitchen environment, consider yourself lucky. The concept can work of course but it really all comes down to pacing and how much of each thing you devote to the story, kitchen time versus the horror element.
In House Of Spoils, written and directed by Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy, we once again are introduced to the cooking horror mashup, this time featuring a witch for good measure. A ghost witch? A zombie witch ghost? A witch ghost zombie that was bitten by a Dracula? Okay, no. It was just a witch but it was interesting enough to pull me in and make me wonder how this was going to be different from movies of this kind from the past. The expectation from the word jump was that this was going to be unique, and I won’t lie, that opening scene had me a little bit excited for what was to come. Then the movie actually started and any good will and hope that the opening had created slowly began to rot away.
Yes Chef, Thank You, Chef
The film stars Ariana DeBose (Hamilton) as a chef on the rise who decides to quit her cushy current restaurant job to run her own kitchen. She needed an investor to put up the cash and that’s where Arian Moayed (Succession) comes in as a bit of a slimy opportunist with dollar signs in his eyes.
source: Amazon Studios
Of course the property that they have chosen is a complete wreck (I mean the place looks cursed or haunted, why would they pick it?) and they slowly begin to get to work making it into the restaurant her dreams. Nothing ever goes right in these scenarios and we start getting glimpses of the history of the place pretty quickly to broaden the mystery and then… the movie goes on autopilot. It was flying high and then stalled out. The entire middle of the film drags so badly which is ironic for a movie about the fast paced kitchen chef lifestyle.
None of the pacing issues are the actors faults of course, DeBose and Moayed both do outstanding jobs of bringing their respective characters to life. Not to mention the perfect performance turned in by Barbie Ferreira as an assistant chef who “slept her way into the job”. It’s never really confirmed that that is how she got to where she is, other characters imply it during fits of anger. One thing is for sure though, her skills in an upscale kitchen are basically on par with mine which is to say, she’s out of her depth. Watching her struggle as well as her moments of comedy relief from the tension in certain scenes easily made her my favorite to watch. Ferreira turned in a well rounded fully realized 3D human being. She took her lumps and kept swinging.
The issue with this movie wasn’t even the story, all of the elements were there: the backstory was solid, the horror was creepy, the actors were delivering, the biggest problem truly was the pacing. Like I said, it started out strong and introduced us to these characters, the overall mystery, and then just kind of sat in that for a while. Scenes would slog on well past their expiration date when we should have really been moving on to the next thing. I don’t know if this was a problem with the editing or the direction but the writing was very solid.
source: Amazon Studios
The set design was incredible. The look of the film was very striking and interesting. By the time the action started to pick up again in the third act (which was actually very strong, the ending made me smile) it was almost too little too late. It was like waking up from a nap and being confused as to where I was.
Last Course, Dessert
This isn’t a movie that I would recommend to the casual viewer. Sure, if they had a love for food and also a love for horror I would tell them to maybe give it a go but I would have to warn them about the entire middle section of the film. This really was a movie that was two-thirds perfect. The beginning and the end were great, it was just that middle part that left me wanting to sob little sobs in hopes that it would hear me and provide some real substance. Honestly if that portion of the film found a way to cut about ten minutes, this movie would have been a five star Michelin restaurant instead of a fast food joint ready to be closed down.
House Of Spoils was a sandwich that had for the bread some high-dollar stuff, maybe with baked in cheese and herbs but for the meat, the part that almost matters most, it gave us a couple of slices of cheese loaf. Not that there is anything wrong with cheese loaf, but you certainly wouldn’t put it on artisan bread and call it fancy. I wanted to like this movie, it started out so strong, it ended so strong, but along the way it lost me when it seemed like it didn’t care. The story pacing was lackluster even though they did have a fantastic and creepy, if not sad, tale to tell us. With just a little more care it could have been amazing. In the end though, it sat me down for a full course meal and all I got served was the bill.
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