Saltburn is a 2023 black comedy thriller film written, directed, and co-produced by Emerald Fennell, starring Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Alison Oliver, Archie Madekwe and Carey Mulligan.

In late 2006,[9] scholarship student Oliver Quick struggles to fit in at the University of Oxford because of his inexperience with upper-class manners.

He befriends Felix Catton, an affluent and popular student who is sympathetic to Oliver's stories of his parents' substance abuse and mental health issues.

When Oliver becomes distraught over his father's sudden death, Felix comforts him and invites him to spend the summer at his family's country house, Saltburn.

His father is still alive, neither of his parents has substance abuse or mental health troubles, and they live in a respectable middle class suburb.

Having now assumed ownership of Saltburn and the Catton family fortune, Oliver happily dances naked around the mansion.

[9] By January 2022, Tom Ackerley and Margot Robbie's LuckyChap Entertainment was in talks to produce, after collaborating with Fennell on her previous film.

[10] In May 2022, Ackerley, Robbie, and Josey McNamara were confirmed as producers, while Rosamund Pike, Jacob Elordi and Barry Keoghan joined the cast.

Despite the house's opulence, the actors ultimately became familiar with Drayton's interiors over the course of filming and comfortable working in it, in order to convey the idea that this grand location was for their characters completely normal and simply their home.

Fennell stated "I drew from my own experience of being a human person, who has felt that thing we all feel at that time in our life which is that absolute insane grip of obsessive love...But obviously I didn't quite go to the lengths that some of the people [in the film] do".

[36] According to these critics, Fennell's Gothic visual style in general mirrors the mythical elements of Coppola's 1992 Dracula film about otherworldly seduction: the Saltburn garden scene, especially, parallels the carnal possessions of Lucy (Sadie Frost) and Mina (Winona Ryder), who are cosmically drawn to Gary Oldman's Count Dracula.

[38] Other critics have found similarities to Pier Paolo Pasolini's film Theorem (1968) and Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975), which also addressed themes of class, power, desire, and seduction.

[31] It was originally scheduled to be released a week earlier but was moved to take advantage of the initial positive response it received at its Telluride premiere.

The website's consensus reads: "Emerald Fennell's candy-coated and incisive Saltburn is a debauched jolt to the senses that will be invigorating for most.

"[55] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 61 out of 100, based on 53 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

He noted that it "boasts dazzling turns from Rosamund Pike and Carey Mulligan" but that "the heavily drawn-out ending feels uncertain".

[57] Writing in the Observer, Wendy Ide wrote that it "stars a miscast Barry Keoghan (he's way too old for the role)" but that "Rosamund Pike, as Felix's mother Elspeth, is gloriously rude; Archie Madekwe, as poor relation Farleigh, is a malicious delight".

[58] Nicholas Barber, reviewing for the BBC, enjoyed the "outrageous, laugh-out-loud punchlines" but felt that "Fennell is prone to fumble" plot twists.

Barber praised the "superb ensemble cast", especially Keoghan ("magnetic"), Pike ("steals the show"), and Elordi ("a revelation").

Fennell's eye is extraordinary, and alongside cinematographer Linus Sandgren, she captures the grand beauty of her architectural locations impeccably" but was disappointed that "scenes often build to reach the cusp of something truly electric, but are let down by clunky dialogue".

[59] Writing in Sight and Sound, Sophie Monks Kaufman found that "the story's superficial treatment of its characters ... becomes increasingly ruinous" and that "the most menacing thing anyone can muster here is a passive-aggressive karaoke choice".

[6] However, Entertainment Weekly columnist Maureen Lee Lenker gave Saltburn an "A", saying the film is a "Gothic thriller dusted with poisonous candy-pop glitter…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.