Savage House (2026)

Powdered, Not Polished - Savage House review by griggs

There's a moment about forty minutes in where you can practically hear the film thinking "this'll do," and that's roughly where Savage House settles for the rest of its runtime.

Richard E. Grant and Claire Foy are clearly having a ball — Foy's got real steel under the powder and the corsetry, Grant's doing his familiar slide into ruin, comfort zone stuff but he wears it well. Together they're the best double act going. The trouble is, they're propping up a film nobody had the nerve to cut down. Whole stretches just sit there when they should've been on the floor of the edit suite.

It thinks it's in Barry Lyndon territory — powdered, rotten under the finery. Trouble is, it's not in the same class — and certainly not the same school. The satire's about as subtle as a soup tureen to the face, then it explains the soup tureen anyway. Bathurst's narration feels bolted on rather than built in, and the middle act — all dinner prep, no dinner — never quite gets going.

Worth a watch for the leads alone, mind. Still, a banquet with nothing on the table.