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A film headlining a chef and overtones of witchery are combined in Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy’s “House of Spoils.” The garden both inspires and holds secrets to yesteryear’s terror. What does all the foliage hold in themselves? The directors attempt a dark mystery, but the film squanders it freely, cobbling together a lazy plot that spruces up an explanatory flashback to bolster a story of female agency and determination.
The narrative fizzles out quickly, saved only up to a degree by its lead, Ariana DeBose, who admittedly works a tad too zealously. It’s the case of an actor so stubbornly convinced she can single-handedly rescue a terribly clueless script that her presence, despite being the sole sincere spot, starts to stand out in some other distracting register.
The film suffers from a muddled sense of focus, a complete imbalance between sudden directions, and the more grounded observations of the disposability with which women are perceived. There are too many hurdles for a female chef to ascend to a position of power; to get a chance demands total sublimation of one’s efforts. The film loses the drift in swinging between supernatural stabs and reclamation of female assertion. Both come off as clumsy and silly.
House of Spoils (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
Ariana DeBose garnered widespread recognition with her Oscar-winning turn in Spielberg’s “West Side Story.” The actress, who brought fire and electric grit to that film, is a compelling, reliable performer. In this film, she takes things with such seriousness that it creates an unintended tonal disparity. It makes things humorless in an already drab film, which turns up the sleekness relayed through the shots of all the fancy, eccentric delicacies.
It is a stodgy film that is peculiarly unaware of what it wants to be and uncertain of how it can steer a trajectory. DeBose plays an unnamed chef who has been working at Marcello’s restaurant uninterrupted for seven years. He is her mentor. He has taught her the ropes of the job. When the film opens, the Chef implements a realization she must have considered for a while.
Irrespective of her excellence at the job, she’d only be stuck if she stays with Marcello. She wants to break out and try out other endeavors that can test her skill and spirit. She quits and takes the offer of her business partner Andres (Arian Moayed), who is opening a new, fine dining restaurant in a remote corner. At the new place, she’d be the head chef.
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The restaurant is targeted to be in a rather rundown house. It has long lain vacant since the passing of its owner, whose origins throw up a murky story and provide the spine for the Chef’s troubles as well as the source of her liberation. The Chef gets to work at the house. But she encounters an infestation problem. Everything she cooks or lays her hands on seems to quickly swarm with bugs and insects. Or are these just her visions? Her grip on reality loosens.
Who was the owner of the house?
The rots drive her almost over the edge. But Andres insists the investor Toli has already been booked for a testing meal. The Chef manages to impress him, but Toli seems to back out once the influential food blogger Hiral (Amara Khan) asserts the menu is just fancy, has no personality, and has no soul of its own. Andres tells the Chef the investor now wants her out. She requests him for another chance. He gives her two weeks, and she starts whipping together a new menu.
She has Lucia (Barbie Ferreira) as sous chef, though she initially is not keen on relying on her. When the Chef comes across the house owner’s cabin and finds a stash of strange supplies sourced from the garden, she is intrigued and tries to add a foliage ingredient. It is a massive success. Both she and Lucia are ecstatic. A new array of unconventional, unusually rich dishes is whipped out.
But there are warnings all around. Alvin, a local kid, hints at the old woman’s coven of witches. She becomes convinced only after noticing the parallels between her own strange visions and the experience of Magnus, the previous chef Andres had brought in, who had also descended into madness. She is confronted with the fact she may herself be pushed over the tether of her sanity.
Later, she becomes all wound up as she starts commanding the kitchen staff to drop the green menu on the restaurant’s opening night. She is even more incensed when Andres tells her that he is appointing Lucia as the head chef for the night since she seems palpably overwhelmed. The two have a confrontation in the cellar, leading to Andres locking her up.
House of Spoils (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
Was the owner a witch?
She screams for help, but of course, nobody can hear her. As she gets all worked up about escaping from the cellar, she stumbles across a secret tunnel. She inches through it and finds a corpse. In the climax, the boundary between dream, past, and real blurs. She is overwhelmed by the memories the old woman, the house’s former owner, wishes to reveal to her. She and a group of women find an earth-based cure for ailments, which they share amongst themselves.
But most of the town didn’t take kindly to the practice, denouncing her as a witch. Her benevolence was disregarded and misread as malevolence. Everyone cornered her, and she retreated into the tunnel, where she hid and died. The spirit of the old woman blessed the Chef, and she miraculously emerged through the earth.
She returns to the house, where the dining table is visibly falling apart in a mess. There’s a fire alarm, and the guests are almost about to leave, but they are intrigued by the Chef preparing a fire on the grounds. Inspired by her, the chefs arrange for an outdoor dining experience, huddling the guests around the fire. Only when dining harnesses the natural elements does the outdoor experience start wielding its true, buzzy potential. As the Chef bites into the rabbit, she heaves a breath of reclamation and embraces a newfound confidence. The Chef leans into the regenerative powers of the old woman, viewing it as a way forward for taking the dining venture to an original, provocative place.
