‘Loot House’ review: This culinary thriller hits just the right amount of delicious and gross

“To be a chef, you have to love the taste of blood.”

Said one of the many chefs present: trophy houseand writers and directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Crudy (knock the man down) are very happy to oblige. From the beginning, blood and cooking have been intertwined. Early in the film, a group of women gather around a fire, pounding chunks of what looks like flesh into a paste. The same bloody fillets are sliced ​​on the grill in a high-end Manhattan kitchen. Cooking seems to be a unique kind of wizardry—and trophy house Prepare to serve us an exciting five course meal.

what is trophy house about?

Ariana DeBose in “Trophy House.”
Image source: Provided by Prime

A dark fairy tale full of delicious food, trophy house An in-depth look at one chef’s pursuit of perfection, a topic viewers may have thought of recently Bear or Menu. But don’t get me wrong, trophy house” The similarity with these projects is that they all take place in a high-end restaurant.

The chef has no name. She’s Just the Chef (Ariana DeBose, west side story), her sense of self is so tightly tied to her career that there is no room for anything else. When she meets sly restaurant owner Andreas (Arian Moayed, succession) at a country restaurant in the north.

Covered in ivy and complete with a secret garden, the chef’s new restaurant looks straight out of a storybook and is a magical launching pad for her biggest dreams. But something is wrong. That is food. Bugs worm their way into every dish she cooks, and mold eats away at her ingredients faster than is biologically possible. Is this just a common infection? Or is it a curse from the property’s previous owner, widely rumored to be a witch?

trophy house Draw inspiration and inspiration from mold and rot.

Ariana DeBose in “Trophy House.”
Image source: Provided by Prime

Although it has its fair share of jump scares and ghostly figures lurking in the background, trophy houseThe real horror is its food. Seeing insects crawling beneath the surface of a dish brings to mind parasites squirming under the host’s skin, while food covered in thick mold is sure to induce nausea.

But perhaps the most disturbing part of the restaurant’s mysterious curse is how quickly it erased the chef’s hard-earned work. Rot ruined a peaceful evening of cooking preparations and threw a life-or-death meeting with investors into chaos. Seeing the chef’s plans fail again and again, whether due to supernatural reasons or Andreas’s doubts about humanity, is more terrifying than the scariest jump scare. (Though these will definitely make the pain worse!)

However trophy house Discover the other side of the challenges chefs face. When she discovers the former owner’s secret garden, the chef and her sous chef Lucia (Barbie Ferreira, Barbie Ferreira, Euphoria), find a way to turn discarded plants and even mold and bugs into gourmet gold. Food stylist Zoe Hegedus creates dishes that are both tempting and disgusting, such as a trendy moldy bread and mushroom dish that the chef encourages people to eat without any silverware. The chef’s near-obsessive culinary inspiration (or is it more?) is intoxicating, and Cole and Crudy transport viewers into a rich and unsettling culinary world.

trophy house Addressing toxic masculinity in the culinary world.

Ariana DeBose and Barbie Ferreria in “Trophy House.”
Photo credit: Glodi Balazs / Previous

trophy house Juxtaposing the lush world the chef enters with the cold, hyper-masculine culinary world she originally comes from. It was her mentor and former boss Marcelo (Marton Csokas) who came up with the idea of ​​chefs tasting blood. He also claims that cooking requires courage, a masculine trait that chefs try to emulate when interacting with their colleagues, but Lucia strongly disagrees with this. The sous chef described the fine dining restaurant as a “big swinging club” and condemned some of the chefs’ “macho posturing”. In stark contrast, Chef and Andreas describe their new gardening focus as “wild, feminine”. After leaving the highly masculine world of her former workplace, has the chef discovered and embraced a new part of herself that she hadn’t cultivated to mold herself to the standards of other big-name male chefs?

Complicating matters further is the image of the witch, who looms over the chef’s dreams with an ominous command: “Feed the soil.” This, combined with the bloody, sacrificial atmosphere of the opening scene, doesn’t paint a picture of her cooking methods. Most favorable portrait. Has the chef actually transformed and evolved in her craft, or has she been manipulated by a higher power? Are blood and sacrifice really the only way to success in cooking (or any form of art)?

trophy house Will definitely keep you guessing in that regard as well as the overall character of the witch. But trust me when I say you won’t expect trophy house‘s final lesson, a turn of events that evades your expectations of a more lurid psychological thriller – and again, this isn’t Menu – favors something more quietly rewarding, but no less fulfilling.

trophy house Had its world premiere at Fantastic Fest. it Premieres on Prime Video on October 3rd.