A guy I used to see once compared me to Barry Keoghan. At first, I took a bit of offense to this. I watched Eternals, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and The Banshees of Inisheren and I kind of understood it as a compliment. Barry was very much his type, and he meant it as a compliment. Then I watched Emerald Fennel’s Saltburn, and suddenly I understood. Barry Keoghan is hot. I felt pretty smug and self-confident once the credits rolled. Like yeah, I’m also a somewhat short, brown-haired, quiet weirdo with a penchant for tall British men. Good for me.
Saltburn made quite a splash when it came out and especially when it hit streaming. I saw clips of it on TikTok before I saw the actual film. There was a whole bunch of talk about the bathtub like it was the craziest part of the movie. People basically said, “This is a weird sex movie that’s slightly scary.” I heard, “Weird erotic horror? Sign me the hell up.”
I watched it and really, really enjoyed it.
I didn’t enjoy it the way some people enjoyed it. I was not pulling out my electric man filler when the credits rolled. Some people did. You can find comments about it over on Reddit where people were concerned their arousal was weird, something only they experienced, something uniquely off-putting… only to find that plenty of others had the same response.
Why is that, though? What makes Saltburn so damn sexy?
One - The Film
Let’s briefly go over the film. I haven’t done this in a while in part because I saw people complain about it with other essayists, but I recently remembered that you shouldn’t simply assume people are in the know about, well, anything. Maybe you clicked on a video about the sensuality of Saltburn with no intention of ever watching the movie. We all know those sorts, the ones who read Wikipedia plot summaries instead of reading or watching anything. Well, my little curious weirdo, I’ve got you covered.
Saltburn is a “black comedy thriller” film by Emerald Fennel. I would personally label it an erotic horror, though. It follows the story of Oliver Quick, a scholarship student at Oxford in the mid-2000s who has trouble fitting in amongst the posh elite, possibly because he’s played by Barry Keoghan and they were preemptively getting revenge for Sabrina Carpenter or whatever joke lands with the celebrity stan-culture weirdos. He’s quickly enamored - ha, get it? - by Felix, the gorgeous rich himbo played by Jacob Elordi. The two bound over the course of the term. When Oliver feels Felix pulling away, he gets a call from his mom. Uh-oh. His dad is dead. He cries to Felix about this. It’s sad. His parents were poor drug users and he’s struggling to make something of his life here at Oxford. He doesn’t want to be them. Felix takes pity or care on him, depending on your reading, and invites him back to his summer estate: Saltburn.
That’s where we’re introduced to this gorgeous estate that’s shot beautifully. It’s ironically so large and spacious that it becomes claustrophobic. The walls are nowhere near you and yet you can feel them closing in. They’re towering to the point they might collapse on top of you.
At Saltburn, we meet Felix’s parents and his mentally ill sister Venetia who has an eating disorder. One of Oliver’s slight tormenters at Oxford is there too: Farleigh, Felix’s cousin. We briefly meet one of the mother’s friends, a woman down on her luck the family took pity upon once upon a time. It’s clear from her scene that the family has a habit of picking up stray kittens… and coldly discarding them whenever they grow bored. The enamored kittens, meanwhile, do their best to cosplay as puppies.
There’s an awkward karaoke moment where Farleigh messes with Oliver. There are lots of shots of gorgeous people being gorgeous, especially Elordi and Keoghan, with closeups on their sun-lit bodies, lingering on every hair on their legs, under their arms, on their stomachs. It drips with sexuality. These are sexy men, the film knows, and they can’t stop looking at each other. You get the feeling that perhaps Oliver is in love with Felix.
Then he spots Felix taking care of Felix Jr in the tub and Oliver goes, “Ehhh-lord-i.” He takes a little tongue dive into the draining tub. You go: What. And the film keeps going. He spots Venetia outside his window and goes to join her in the evening. They flirt. Why only taste one sibling when you can try out both? So he goes tongue exploring somewhere else. She goes “noooo it’s dirty,” and he goes, “Mmmm blood is yummy yummy.” And you go: what. And the film keeps going. At breakfast, he orders her to actually finish her meal. And so she eats a bit more than normal. There’s a clear dom-sub thing playing out here.
Farleigh saw the little red face paint moment and tells Felix. Oliver is all, “What? No. I’d never. He just haaaates me.” Then he breaks a mirror, takes a glass shard, wakes Farleigh up by straddling him with the glass to his neck, and threatens him while taking care of Farleigh Jr. You go: what. And the film keeps going.
Oliver gets Farleigh kicked out, I guess because the film didn’t want to commit to Oliver collecting pets in the mansion, though that would have been hot. Felix tosses Oliver in his car and goes, “I want to meet your mom!” Awww, so cute. Only, oopsies, Oliver’s entire backstory was a lie. His dad’s not dead. His parents aren’t poor drug users. They’re a middle class family that loves each other well enough. Oliver cries cuz he didn’t want to be found out. Felix takes him back to Saltburn and is all like “I hate you.” They throw Oliver a massive birthday party. Farleigh is there. Because Oliver didn’t turn him into a pet, the guy jokes about how Oliver is going to get abandoned soon. Oliver tries to apologize to Felix, who’s dressed like an angel, in the place all good things happen: a hedge maze. Felix isn’t super receptive. Uh-oh, he’s dead. Everyone’s sad. We have a funeral. Oliver goes to Felix’s fresh grave, shoves down his trousers, and cries while taking care of little Oliver in the grave dirt. You go: what. And the film keeps going.
Venetia is all “I think you’re evil” to Oliver. She offs herself in the bathtub and you go: Is that the rimming tub? But the film keeps going, not taking the time for another weird sex thing. Well, she’s dead. The dad is like “take this money and get out of here.” Oliver does because now he has no more attractive young people to eat. Some time passes, Daddy dies. Mommy randomly runs into Oliver at a cafe. They hit it up. She’s all “Please come back to Saltburn.” And Oliver is like “ehehehe, yes of course, mommy.” She makes him her heir. Yadda yadda, she gets ill, she’s intubated, he tells the truth. See, Felix didn’t randomly die. Ollie poisoned him. Venetia did off herself, but he gave her the blades and suggested she should. Then he straddles Mommy, grabs her tube, and yanks it out. Yay, the whole family is dead. Ollie is the new owner of Saltburn.
Murder on the Dancefloor plays and Barry Keoghan dances around the estate naked, little Barry flopping around, and you go: nice. And the film stops going because it’s over.
Do you want to watch it? I think you should. Some people love it. Some were turned on by it. Some grossed. Some a bit bored. And some hated it, and not even for the weird sex stuff. What’s up with that?
Two - Eat the Rich
Because the film is sort of a comedy that involves rich people getting killed, lots of people sort of assume it’s an eat the rich sort of movie, and that colors their reaction to it. In a negative review for The Standard, Alexandra Jones writes, “The film bills itself as a satire, and most critics have taken that to mean a satire on the upper classes — but that simply doesn’t bear out. … The moneyed upper classes are not, as Saltburn paints them, misguided bumbling buffoons. They are the people running the country and the worlds of business, the arts, the media — and if you let them, they will happily slam the door in your face given half a chance.”
Or as Tom Davidson writes, “I also thought the central politics of it — the upper class should beware the treacherous middle class who want to usurp them — was at best misjudged and at worst downright offensive.”
“It is a critique of the upper class that forgets to actually criticize,” says Gail Curtis in The Bates Student.
Reason Magazine calls its class politics reactionary.
That’s not to say that all of the people viewing it as an eat the rich tale think it’s poorly done or necessarily has poor politics. When Vince Mancini discusses the film in GQ, he makes clear an annoyance with the assumption that films are morality plays before writing, “Is it worse to be born terrible, or to aspire to it? It’s a salient point — after all, isn’t deliberately, calculatedly turning yourself into a rich son of a bitch kind of worse than just being one by accident of birth? — but even more so than that, it’s a clever conceit that puts us in the position of rooting for the pervert.”
In his view, it isn’t about the evil middle class looking to destroy the sweet idiotic upper class. It becomes “The one who longs for power is the one who should be most kept from it.”
So… people have opinions on the class commentary of the film. It’s what most people are talking about besides the weird sex stuff. So obviously it has to be trying to say something about class and power, right? With the caveat that I think those interpretations are valid and making categorical claims about a piece of art is almost hyperbole: No, it’s not about any of that. Like how The Menu is not a weak satire about eating the rich with an on the nose seen about tuning them into a flaming dessert. The Menu is about being an artist. It’s about the pointless cruelty of the revolution. It’s not about eating the rich. Likewise, neither is Saltburn. Saltburn is about the weird sex stuff.
Three - Vampire
Emerald Fennell has labelled the film a vampire flick. What are vampires? At time of writing, I started watching the TV adaptation of Interview with a Vampire. From episode one it’s clear that a vampire is desire summoned. It’s desire transformed into horror. A vampire is what makes us writhe in bed at night before the cold clarity hits and we twist our face in shame. To be the prey of a vampire is to provide life. It’s to be so desirable that they must feed from you. Without you, they will die. Not only can your desires be fulfilled, they can be lifegiving.
Because we are terrified of our desires, we make the vampire. We are ashamed of sexuality, so we sublimate into monsters and fear.
Venetia is on her period. Ollie jokes he’s a vampire, and he goes down on her anyway. He takes her, blood and all.
How often have you seen men act performatively grossed out by menstruation? Or, really, just by women’s anatomy? What’s up with, straight men? Why is there a vocal segment of you guys that go on about how revolting you find women? I know it’s misogyny but… it doesn’t sound like you’re attracted to them. I fully understand wife guys and simps and people who wax poetic, but the performance of distaste… Well, is it so you don’t come off as needy? So you can put women “in their place?” Is it to perform masculinity via stoicism? This is a tangent, but seriously. So many straight people seem revulsed by the opposite sex. As a gay man who is uh… very appreciative of the male body, I don’t get it.
But this performance of disgust is old. It’s part of Christianity, even, where a woman on her period is considered unclean. It’s an ancient hatred, and so you’ll find plenty of women who were taught to internalize that. They’re going to view their own body and its processes with disgust, shame, and hatred.
According to Refinery29, this is what Fennell had to say about the scene:
He's been told in the scene before that Venetia is a masochist and that she has an eating disorder. Therefore, what he does in the next scene is to tell her that her body is beautiful and everything about it is beautiful and a turn-on. He has no qualms or squeamishness about her. I think that is a gift, actually. He gives her something that nobody else has ever given her — he dedicates himself to her pleasure
Imagine someone so desiring you, in such need for your beauty, your taste, your everything that they will accept every ugly piece of you that you despise, and they’ll call it beautiful. They’ll lick their lips like your blood is a delicacy.
Oliver is a vampire, and that’s why this scene is hot. It’s not merely that it’s a sex scene. If he was just going down on Venetia, there’d be some mild spice, but it wouldn’t be setting the theatre aflame.
It’s also why, when he orders her to eat, to take better care of herself, it gets even hotter. That is true domination, to consume someone, to make them feel worthy, and then to force them to be kind to themselves. Shallelujah is an adult artist I see on Twitter and used to see on TikTok. He likes to post dom videos where he’ll tell you to drink water or be nice to yourself. When a masochist is a submissive, they expect degradation. To meet them instead with affirmation is to truly take advantage of their masochism. It’s difficult and frustrating to be nice to yourself. It’s easier to take the play abuse. Oliver showcasing this sort of dominance, like a vampire to a pet it wants to keep and therefore must keep healthy, is undeniably hot.
It’s so hot, we need to throw some cool water on this essay.
Four - Bathtub
Tom Davidson wrote the following: “The bathtub scene was “so powerful because it is so sexy”, Fennell said. Point of fact: it is absolutely not sexy and I haven’t seen anyone, Fennell aside, argue that it is.”
Well congratulation Tommy boy, because I’m here to tell you: the bathtub scene is an extension of the vampire scene. In fact, its a heightened version of it. Which means… it’s even hotter. So that cool water we’re in, well, it’s steaming the place up.
So Oliver spies Felix having a good time in the tub. After Felix finishes and gets out, Oliver goes to the draining tub which has some Felix Felicis or liquid luck in it, not to make a Harry Potter reference in 2025 but the joke came to me and had to be made. We close in on the tub drain… and Oliver sticks his tongue out and he laps at the Felix soup. As others have described it, he rims the tub.
That’s hot.
Fennell could have opted to have Oliver drink some of the bath water while the tub was draining, like he was going to drown in it just for the chance to consume some part of Felix. That would have done much the same thing thematically. It’d still be an escalation of the vampire scene. But she chose tub rimming. It’s evocative at the same time that it’s gross. If you think about it, you might start thinking of an act that involves ingesting semen from a different hole. There’s nobody at Saltburn besides Ollie and the help that Felix could have had sex with. What this moment indicates is that if there were, when Felix left, Ollie would dive in for a little taste.
Sperm, like blood, is lifegiving. Matter of fact, it goes from the metaphorical lifegiving of blood to a vampire to the literal lifegiving fluid humanity has to offer. Maybe you start wondering if Felix is going to give that to Oliver directly like Ollie took Venetia’s blood. I get the sense, from the film, if he had, tragedy would have been averted.
This is of course made hotter by Elordi being very handsome and Keoghan being a reliable little freak in movies who is also handsome. Despite Oliver saying he wasn’t in love with Felix, you get the vibe he has a bit of a crush. The awkward gay guy secretly guzzling the ejaculate of the pretty rich himbo who took him home for the summer? That’s hot.
I kind of glazed over the bathwater itself being important, didn’t I? If Felix had merely blasted on his towel and Oliver licked it up, that’d still be sexy and slightly creepy, but it wouldn’t hit the same. In part, it’s because revulsion and fear are quite similar, and fear can be misattributed as arousal in our brains. I talk a whole bunch about that in my video on erotic horror, but suffice it to say, it’s hot because it’s gross. But it’s not so gross that we feel ill.
So what is the bathwater? Well, it is, at the end of the day, a waste product. It carries skin cells and loose hairs. It holds sweat and dirt. It collects from your scalp down to the soles of your feet. It is a little bit of all of you.
This scene is Oliver saying, once more, that everything about Felix is so desirable, he would consume the dirty parts of him and find that consumption beautiful. It’s to say that if Felix came in from the hot sun, covered in sweat, Oliver would lick him clean.
The bathtub clarifies that Oliver did not call himself a vampire as a quick joke about the blood. Oliver is a true vampire. He may not be a fantasy creature, but he is the embodiment of desire and consumption.
He must have you. He must have you. He must –
Five - Non-con
This is the part that’s going to get me into trouble with the all the people who don’t understand arousal, art, erotica, or analysis. Ahhh, I’m so scared. I hope a vampire doesn’t come to as a manifestation of my fears and repressed desires as a result of this…
After Farleigh messes with Oliver one too many times, Oliver, pissed off, breaks a mirror. He then takes a shard, threatens Farleigh, sleeps with him, and sets it up for Farleigh is cut off by the family and kicked out of Saltburn. Ollie’s going to get his revenge.
And… it’s kinda hot.
Oliver takes a shard from that broken mirror, climbs ontop of Farleigh, puts the glass to his neck, and asks if he’s going to behave. Farleigh is both scared and turned on. Oliver is enjoying being in control. He reaches back and gives Farleigh Jr some action. For a moment I thought Oliver started riding him while holding the glass to Farleigh’s neck and, honestly, that would have been hotter. A dom power bottom getting a sub top brat to behave via unhinged threats where they end up falling asleep next to each other? That’s hot.
Is it non-con? That’s short for non-consent. Maybe not, but it’s dubcon at the least given the whole weapon to the neck thing. There’s a clear danger here. If you don’t let Oliver control you, you might die. He must take you. You must submit. You don’t need to think so deeply. Be a good boy and you get to live. Thematically, since Oliver is a vampire and vampires are summoned forces of repressed desire, you could argue that this is legitimately what Farleigh wants in a partner: danger, a back and forth, and harsh dominance.
If there’s one thing anti-art people are going to do all day long, it’s shit on non-con and dub-con for understandable reasons. At the end of the day, though, it comes across as a censorious anti-art instinct that doesn’t really understand fantasy or erotica or art. It definitely doesn’t understand erotic horror. When I was mulling over writing this section while taking a shower, I kept trying to figure out how I wanted to word my traumatic credentials. Men have done horrible things to me. But, you know what, no. I don’t need to couch this section in trauma. Why is it hot? Because the loss of control is hot. Sex is always about control. It is always about vulnerability.
This scene works because it’s uncomfortable. It’s sexy because it’s taboo. It’s erotic because it is horrifying. You’re allowed to be uncomfortable about that. You’re allowed to dislike it. But it’s still hot. It’s not pro-assault to say that. In my video over erotic censorship, the sources I use for that video, and in Contrapoint’s video over Twilight, it’s argued over and over again that non-con fantasy isn’t really about being subjected to or committing any sort of assault. Argue with a wall. They’re great conversationalists. Mine has sticky notes on it because it loves to argue.
People will argue about the morality of erotica as if it’s a special, dangerous, icky, gross, different genre of art that needs strict policing because sex is scary until we’re all rolling in our graves from zombie orgasms.
Six - The Graveyard
Speaking of graveyard orgasms, Oliver has sex with Felix’s grave.
I… didn’t find this hot. That’s not to say it isn’t hot, but there’s a sadness to this. It’s an erotic despair. It’s weird, sure. It’s maybe creepy. There’s a grave so it’s probably erotic horror. But it’s deeply sad. This isn’t a performance for anyone. No one’s there to see it. No one’s there to receive it. Oliver isn’t celebrating. He’s mourning.
I found this scene deeply moving. Maybe if the film pushed itself a little further, he’d eat some of the grave dirt as he plows the field and plants some trees.
Why is this seen here? What does it do?
I think it makes clear that Oliver… did not set out to be evil. Oliver set out to consume, because he had a crush. He was in love. And truest form of love is consumption.
Seven - Murder and Consumption
This is a vampire story, which means it is a vore story. It is a story about predator and prey, dominance and submission. It is about sex. It is about desire. So it has to be weird and scary and off-putting. Erotic horror is almost the entirety of erotica.
Oliver is a vampire. What is he summoned for? It’s easy to guess with most of the characters. For Elspeth, the mom, he’s a quirky charity case, which she loves, and then he’s a stand-in for her children which she lost. It’s a desire to be a mother. With Venetia, he tells this girl full of self-hate that she is loved. He makes her take care of herself. It’s a desire to be worthy and be desired. With Farleigh, he is cruel and violently dominant. It is a desire to be bested, to be taken, to submit. What is it with Felix?
Oliver hooks Felix with a sob story. He’s the poor boy with sick, poor parents. His father is dead. When Felix brings Ollie to Saltburn, it’s revealed that he has a habit of doing this. Honestly, when that came up, I thought this was going to turn against Oliver in some way, that Felix would destroy him and own him. But… that would be the better outcome, wouldn’t it? Oliver is a smart, shy puppy obsessed with Felix. He relies on him. He needs him. Maybe Felix has a hero complex. Maybe he desires someone who actively needs him. When Ollie is comfortable, Felix sort of loses interest. So then… the bathtub… how do we make sense of that? The other sex scenes, minus the sad time at the grave, are fulfilling the desires of those who interact with the vampire. It makes sense then to assume the bathtub rimming is an expression of Felix’s desire. What could that possibly be, though? To put his babies in a short dorky guy with dark hair and a bit of social ineptitude? Sign me up. But then… they probably would have had sex at some point in the movie. If Oliver is a vampire, then Felix desires to own a pet that is obsessed with him. He needs to be needed. He longs to be consumed.
Though Oliver manipulates pretty much everyone, Felix is the only person he’s submissive toward. This is because Felix does not desire to be submissive. He wants a pet. That is the want of a dom.
More importantly, he wants to be consumed by someone’s need. When he discovers Oliver’s lie, it isn’t simply that it was a lie. It’s discovering that Oliver doesn’t truly need him. If Oliver’s family was nice and well-off but were cruel to him, had cut him off, the lie wouldn’t sting, because Oliver would still require Felix and his help. He could still be saved. He could be a pet.
The bathtub scenes is an expression of consumption.
Vampires are manifestations of consumption because desire is all consuming.
What’s up with the murders, then? If Oliver is desire and consumption, if he is a creature of sex, of horror erotica, why does he kill these people or threaten to kill them? It’s not simply because death adds to the horror and therfore to the sexiness. There’s something else.
Felix dies because he does not have sex with Oliver. If he had turned the guy into a pet, into his submissive, if he pushed Oliver onto the floor and put a leash on him, no one would have died. Oliver would have kept feeding on Felix until the end of time. Felix, though, rejects him. Oliver is the manifestation of consumption. If he is not allowed his meal, if he is denied it, then he does the ultimate consumption: he eats their souls. Oliver kills Felix because Felix won’t be his. In order, then, to fulfil Felix’s repressed desires, Oliver has to kill him. There is no other option. Oliver could never leave Felix’s life. That is not the nature of a vampire. Once Felix summoned him, he was doomed. You either give in to desire or it consumes you.
This, too, is what happens with Venetia. She doesn’t die because Oliver has a special contempt for her and her family. She dies she too rejects Oliver. She refuses to allow him to dominate her, to feast from her. So he gets her to off herself.
I want to suggest something weird. If Oliver represents desire, and these characters die when rejecting him, what happens if imagine he doesn’t exist? What if he’s only a metaphor? Well then, he didn’t literally kill Felix. Felix would have slipped away during a party and drank poison on his own accord, because the shame and repression of desire led him to kill himself. That’s exactly what would happen to Venetia as well. Their deaths became a clear warning: The only things that awaits you if you reject your desires wholeheartedly, even the shameful ones, are death and despair.
Now, personally, I think Saltburn should have gone a step further with Venetia’s death. I think Oliver should he eaten her a second time, but, and yes this is going to gross and scary, with the slash on her wrist serving as a metaphorical vagina.
So. Is Saltburn an eat the rich film? Yes, but only in a weird sex way. Why is the movie so sexy? It’s because Saltburn is about vore.
Sources
“'I grew up on an estate — the class prejudice in Saltburn repelled me'” - Alexandra Jones | The Standard
“Viral success of Saltburn’s gross-out scenes only makes me hate it more” - Tom Davidson | Medium
“Saltburn Takes “Eat The Rich” Too Literally” - Gail Curtis | The Bates Student
“Review: Is Saltburn an Eat-the-Rich Comedy? Not Quite.” - Robby Soave | Reason
“Stop Asking Whether 'Succession' and 'Saltburn' Are Mean Enough to Rich People” - Vince Mancini | GQ Magazine
“‘Saltburn’ Writer-Director Emerald Fennell: It’s ‘A Vampire Movie’ About ‘The Fetishization Of Beauty’” - Antonia Blyth | Deadline
“Saltburn Is Here — & It’s Just As Confusingly Horny As You Hoped It Would Be” - Alexandra Koster | Reginery29
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