SPOILER ALERT: This story contains descriptions of key scenes and storylines in Saltburn.
Oscar-winning filmmaker Emerald Fennells new twisted thriller, Saltburn, includes several graphic scenes that have left moviegoers debating whether to be titillated or disturbed.
It gets under your skin, Fennell told me Tuesday at the films Los Angeles premiere. We just want to make something that makes people feel something. I want to make stuff that you go and sit in a dark room full of strangers and you dont know what youre going to feel and you dont know where youre going to be probed. And everyone has a different take on it.
Some people are screaming, some people are squealing, she continued. Some people are turned on, some people are freaked out and some are furious. Some people dont really care. What you want is for people to spill out into the street and want to go and have a drink and talk about it.
While I certainly wasnt drinking on the carpet, I did talk to stars Jacob Elordi and Barry Keoghan about the Amazon movies most explicit scenes. In the film, Keoghan stars as a university student in mid-2000s England who becomes dangerously obsessed with an aristocratic classmate, played by Elordi.
In one scene, Keoghan watches Elordi masturbate in a bathtub. Keoghan is seen licking up Elordis semen around the tubs drain. I was like, Thank God, its mine, Elordi cracked. I was very proud. I was very proud to have Barry Keoghan guzzling it like that.
When I tell Keoghan what Elordi said, the Oscar nominee exclaimed, He doesnt text me back or ring me back. Its so weird. Hes pretending to like me. Its weird, man.
About tonight. #jacobelordi and #barrykeoghan tease us at the @Saltburnfilm premiere. #justforvariety pic.twitter.com/h8bYyga0DF
Marc Malkin (@marcmalkin) November 15, 2023 Keoghan drops his pants multiple times during the film. In one sequence, he humps the ground of a cemetery plot. I kid you not.
The gravesite was sort of like a collaboration with me and Emerald, Keoghan recalled. On the day, I was like, Can I try something? I wanted to see what the next level of obsession was. So I asked for a closed set. I wanted to see where it went. It could have gone completely wrong but I think it moved the story.
Fennell explained, If youre taken over with grief and horror and love and sadness, people do crazy things. And thats what this film is about.
Archie Madekwe marveled over getting up close and personal with Keoghan during a late-night bedroom romp. It was a real pinch-me moment to have a scene with an actor Ive respected for so long, Madekwe said. He has such an intensity. He has these eyes that Emerald describes as shark eyes. You just dont know what hes thinking.
As for movies final scene where Keoghan goes full Monty dancing to Sophie Ellis-Bextors 2001 hit song, Murder on the Dancefloor Keoghan insisted it was cold during filming.
I remarked, It certainly didnt look cold.
Keoghan laughed. No comment, he said, before skedaddling away for a cast photo at the top of the carpet.