The movie Saltburn isn’t this innocent love story that it looks like in the beginning. You’ll realize it’s really about obsession and desire. The movie raised people to have a lot of negative and positive feelings about the make of the movie. Who would have known that it turned out to be one of the craziest plot twist movies of 2023? 

Saltburn is about a scholarship student in Oxford University named Oliver (Barry Keoghan), who befriends the popular college student, playing the heart throb Jacob Elordi as Felix Catton. After finding out that Oliver wasn’t as fortunate, Felix invites him to Saltburn, his family residence for the summer. The audience were aware of Oliver’s admiration for Felix, but not to this kind of extent. As Oliver starts to get to know Felix and his family, Oliver starts to have some pretty strange and obsessive behavior towards Felix. As the movie goes on, we start to find out who Oliver really is. From the beginning of the movie, Oliver had been trying to destroy the family, one by one until he was the last one standing—or alive.

The media finds out that Barry Keoghan actually improved one of the most twisted scenes in the movie (Felix’s grave scene.) Knowing that Keoghan improved such a scene, just shows how much effort that he put into his role as Oliver. The interesting part about the movie is the fact that Oliver was the main character and the villain. The audience will always root for the main character, even if they are the villain because we sympathize with them. We get an idea of what goes through their head and have a better understanding of their perspective more than the other characters. The creators used this technique as an advantage to trick us into not believing that Oliver was in fact, a sociopath. While watching the movie, we didn’t want to believe that Oliver was the villain until his true colors were revealed at the end of the movie. That is what made the movie such a big plot twist. 

There were subtle signs hinting that Oliver wasn’t who he made himself look like. He would watch Felix bathe, and drink his contaminated bath water. He began an intimate encounter with Felix’s sister, Venetia. When he was caught by their cousin Farleigh, he lied about it and began an intimate encounter with Farleigh as well. In the middle of the movie, we find out that Oliver had lied about being less fortunate to Felix, which technically ends their relationship. Since the family planned a big birthday party for Oliver, both had to pretend as if nothing happened until after the party. During the party, Oliver tries to apologize to Felix about his dishonesty, but Felix doesn’t accept it, which results in Oliver drugging Felix. This shows that Oliver is not okay in the head. By the end of the movie, you can put together that Oliver was a sociopath. He showed no remorse for all of the pain he caused. He admitted that he planned everything—starting from the moment he laid eyes on Felix, to one day be more powerful than his family. 

This movie was pretty controversial because of the explicit scenes and violence throughout the movie. Some believe that it was a satire “eat the rich” movie, but others think the movie was completely unnecessary. According to the article, Saltburn’ Backlash Is Another Weirdly Personal Campaign Against Emerald Fennell by Anna Menta, Menta says “Critics who disliked Saltburn—which currently has a 70 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes—have zeroed in on this twist. They take issue with the revelation that Saltburn is not, in the end, a movie about evil rich people, but instead a movie about evil middle-class folks who covet the rich lifestyle.” See, many people did question whether it was a diss towards rich people. 

This movie had me thinking about it for days after. I was in utter disbelief, not just because of the plot twist, but from everything that Oliver did. It’s one of those movies that you want to re-watch again, to see more hidden clues and foreshadow. It made me feel crazy for giving Oliver the benefit of the doubt. After watching, I was trying to piece the movie together to make sense of it. To this day, I can’t fully understand the point of the movie.