‘House of Spoils’ review: This exciting cooking game is just the right amount of delicious and disgusting.

“To be a chef, you have to love the taste of blood.”

Said one of the many chefs present House of Lootsand writers and directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy (Knock the Man Down) are all too happy to oblige. From jumping, blood and cooking together. At the opening of the film, a group of women gather around a fire, pounding what looks like bloody meat into a paste. Cut to perfectly bloody filets on the grill in a high-end Manhattan kitchen. Cooking, it seems, is its own kind of magic – too House of Loots ready to serve us a delightful five-course meal for two.

What House of Loots about?

A dark tale with a culinary bite, House of Loots taps into one chef’s pursuit of perfection, a theme viewers can relate to lately A bear or The menu. But make no mistake, House of Loots‘ similarity in those projects begins and ends with the fact that it takes place in a high-class restaurant.

The chef in question has no name. You’re Just a Chef (Ariana DeBose, West Side Story), his sense of self is so tied to his work that there is no other place. He gets the opportunity of a lifetime when he partners with Andreas of the innovative food business (Arian Moayed, Succession) in a rural northern restaurant.

Covered in ivy and boasting a secret garden, the Chef’s new restaurant is straight out of a storybook, a magical launch pad for his big dream. However, something is closed. That is, food. Bugs get into her every dish, and mold outgrows her ingredients faster than is biologically possible. Is this just a run-of-the-mill attack? Or is it a curse from the previous landlord, who is said to be a witch?

House of Loots wrings spooks and inspiration from mold and decay.

Ariana DeBose in “House of Spoils.”
Credit: Courtesy of Prime

Although it boasts its fair share of jump scares and ghosts lurking in the background, House of Loots‘ The true fear is in its food. The sight of bugs crawling just under the bowl brings to mind vermin squirming under the guard’s skin, and thick blankets of moldy food are a surefire way to induce nausea.

But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the restaurant’s mysterious curse is how quickly it wipes out the Chef’s hard work. Decay ends the whole night of preparing to cook quietly, making a do-it-yourself meeting or a break with a confused investor. Seeing Chef’s plans go awry over and over again, due to supernatural reasons and human doubts from Andreas, evokes more fear than even the spookiest jump scares. (Although those certainly help to increase the pain!)

However House of Loots finds a side in the challenges that Chef faces. When he discovers the former owner’s secret garden, Chef embarks on a multi-year food quest, accompanied by his cook, Lucia (Barbie Ferreira, Euphoria), finding a way to turn discarded plants and even fungi and bugs into fine dining gold. Food stylist Zoe Hegedus creates concoctions that are as appealing as they are repulsive, such as a delicious baked bread and mushroom dish that Chef encourages people to eat without any silverware. A culinary (or perhaps other?) inspired chef’s escapades are intoxicating, Cole and Krudy lure viewers into a delicious yet unfussy culinary world.

House of Loots we are dealing with toxic masculinity in the culinary world.

Ariana DeBose and Barbie Ferreria in “House of Spoils.”
Credit: Glodi Balazs / Prime

House of Loots combines the green world Chef enters the cold, masculine world from which he initially came. It was his mentor and former manager Marcello (Marton Csokas) who said that about chefs who taste blood. He also asserted that cooking takes balls, the type of Chef that he tries to imitate in his interactions with his colleagues, which is the opposite of Lucia. The sous chef describes the fine dining as “a big dick swinging club” and criticizes the Chef’s “macho posturing”. Contrast that with Chef’s new focus on gardening, which he and Andreas describe as “wild, like women.” When she leaves the very masculine world of her former workplace, does Chef find and embrace her new side, which she didn’t cultivate to conform to the standards of other celebrity male chefs?

Complicating matters here is the figure of the witch, who watches over Chef’s dreams with a terrifying command: “Feed the soil.” That, along with the bloody, gory opening sequence, doesn’t paint the best picture of his cooking style. Is Chef really changing and improving in his career, or is he being manipulated by a higher power? And is blood and sacrifice the only recipe – or any art form – for success?

House of Loots it certainly keeps you guessing on that, and the witch’s role in general. But trust me when I say you won’t expect it House of LootsThe final lesson, a turn of events that avoids what you might expect from a quirky psychological thriller – again, this isn’t The menu – in favor of something quietly beneficial, yet slightly fulfilling.

House of Loots reviewed for its world premiere at Fantastic Fest. It premieres October 3 on Prime Video.