HOUSE OF SPOILS - Mark Reviews Movies

House of Spoils, Amazon MGM Studios

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | October 2, 2024

Not every story has to be or suggest something else to succeed. For example, there might be a fine character study about an ambitious chef, facing the pressures of independence and leadership and the need to accomplish something unique, in House of Spoils. However, such a tale apparently isn't enough for co-writer/directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy—or marketable enough for studios that fear anything that doesn't neatly fit into a familiar genre or seem sellable to a mass audience.

For whatever reason, then, this movie quickly veers into the territory of horror, although nothing about the setup particularly screams or even implies such an approach. So many movies have difficulty maintaining or, on the flip side, succeed in accomplishing one mode, so why do filmmakers, producers, or studio executives seem so eager to add the unnecessary burden of trying to force another into otherwise straightforward material?

On its face, Savage Cole and Krudy's story seems just fine without the extra layer of trying to be scary, too. In it, an unnamed chef, referred to only—and awkwardly—as Chef (Ariana DeBose), quits her job as the sous-chef at a swanky restaurant in the city to pursue a new opportunity. It's a fine-dining establishment being built almost from scratch by restauranteur Andres (Arian Moayed) at an old, abandoned estate in the middle of nowhere.

The guy thinks Chef is talented enough to run the kitchen and develop an original menu. However, her now-former boss (played by Marton Csokas) warns her that such dreams are often paths to failure, while bluntly stating that he doesn't believe she has the stuff to manage an entire kitchen. She decides to go for it anyway, quitting a well-paying job, with an offer to double her salary if she stays on, and giving up her apartment to dedicate herself to the new venture.

The stresses here are obvious and, in DeBose's performance, believable. Andres wants something different from Chef's menu, although he has that way of speaking in vague sentiments and hollow ambitions of idea people. He also seems to have selected a sous-chef for his most important employee in Lucia (Barbie Ferreira), who lies about her experience and only seems in line for the job from the implication of a non-professional relationship with the owner. To top it all off, the estate is a shambles, especially the kitchen, which is covered in dust, crawling with insects, and seems to exist as a perfect environment for mold to grow on everything.

Before any of this is established, the movie offers a brief prologue to the estate's past, when a mysterious woman and a coven of others prepare for some kind of sacrifice. Yes, "coven" is used intentionally, because the woman and her cohorts are witches, who, as we learn from a couple of area locals, were chased away from the place after rumors of rituals and other things started to spread.

Everything here, then, gets that added level of the supernatural. Chef begins having visions of the enigmatic woman, appearing out of nowhere and eventually leading her to a hidden garden that's somehow preserved. That's good news for Chef, because the kitchen, her own garden, and everything else goes wrong.

A meal she prepares for a dinner with an investor and a food critic spoils overnight in the fridge. A single rabbit seems to destroy the entirety of the vegetables Chef has planted in the same amount of time. Something definitely isn't right with the place, and it might not be bacteria and one rabbit. Maybe, though, it's all in Chef's head.

Whatever the answer is, it's irrelevant to the main issue with the movie. It becomes so invested in the gross imagery (which is, admittedly, pretty unpleasant), the uncertainty of Chef's perspective, the investigation into the estate's witchy past, and the occasional attempt to startle us that the story and the protagonist become beholden to the broad mystery, as well as these broader horror elements. There's a whole narrative about Chef facing the pressure of her new job, as well as some ideas about the specific challenges of being a woman in this field and surrounded by men who hold sway over her fate. Instead, bugs keep crawling out of unappetizing places, and mold spreads in an instant. Chef hears the witch's voice and discovers instructions about the estate's upkeep by way of sacrifice. Then again, it could just be her imagination.

DeBose is convincing enough in this role that some of the original setup—watching this character confront and endure or struggle with the stress of the job at hand—still comes through here. Her performance in House of Spoils suggests a different movie than the one we get, which seems confused about its intentions and cheapens the real story that's right there at the core.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products