Whether it’s down to brilliant marketing, an abundance of viral moments, or sheer film-making talent, there’s no getting away from the fact that nearly two months after its initial release, Saltburn has become the must-see film of the moment. It was Prime Video’s No 1 film over Christmas, featured song Murder on the Dancefloor is back in the charts, and TikTok appears to have gone beserk.
Saltburn’s route to this is relatively unorthodox. A glamorous, Brideshead-style period film, with an Oscar-winning writer-director in the chair and a name-droppable cast including Barry Keoghan, Rosamund Pike and Jacob Elordi, Saltburn’s entry into the world was relatively gentle. Far from an effects-laden blockbuster with proven audience-attractors, a film like this would aim to be hosed down with admiring reviews, and find itself positioned for a significant awards run.
In the event, reviews were far from unanimous, particularly in the UK: the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw called it “watchable but sometimes weirdly overheated and grandiose”, while the Daily Telegraph’s Robbie Collin applauded its “sheer, nude-bungee-jumping-level fearlessness”. Saltburn was swiftly labelled the “most divisive film of the year”.
A high-profile festival run, including a world premiere at the Telluride festival (which has previously acted as a launchpad for 12 Years a Slave, Moonlight and Belfast), led to a modest initial cinema release, never reaching higher than No 8 in the North American box office chart, and currently standing at a respectable $20.6m in worldwide takings. One statistic, however, may be a pointer to things to come: its box office takings held up remarkably well in its third week, declining by 9.3%, an impressive result in an environment where films normally drop high double-digits each week. Word of mouth, in retrospect, must have been strong.
And, in the digital age, that is no longer an invisible weapon. Saltburn’s powerful online game – crossing TikTok, Spotify, Letterboxd and all points in between – appears to be a juggernaut, with Deadline reporting that Saltburn-related videos have recorded 4bn views on TikTok alone. Writer-director Emerald Fennell’s eye for viral moments – the bath, the grave, the dance – would appear to mesh fully with this non-traditional method of getting eyeballs on her film.
Saltburn isn’t yet achieving the same awards-related critical mass as Fennell’s debut, Promising Young Woman. It missed out entirely at the Screen Actors Guild awards and scored only two nominations at the Golden Globes. Yet momentum can gather and awards season can swing.
Saltburn may be the latest example of the critic-proof movie, though far from the one that depends on an action-star or comic-book fanbase to rack up the revenue. Saltburn has come from the opposite direction: an awards movie that has compensated for any brickbats with a flattering ability to pique a digital-oriented audience. A Brideshead for the TikTok generation? There are worse epitaphs.
