House of Spoils (2024) Review: Ariana DeBose’s Game Performance Can’t Sustain This Half-Baked Culinary Horror

In Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy’s and Jason Blum-produced House of Spoils, the co-directors’ second feature film after the dark comedy-thriller Blow the Man Down, they combine culinary nightmare and witch horror with supernatural elements. The result? A potential combo of ingredients that gets off to a promising start.

Here, we have an ambitious chef (Ariana DeBose, whose character isn’t given a name) who has been working in a high-end restaurant for her boss and mentor, Marcello (Marton Csokas in a brief but effective cameo appearance). Then, one night she decides to quit her job since she already has a plan to become her own boss and head chef with her restaurateur partner Andres (Arian Moayed). She and Andres have even found a place to set up their restaurant in a remote old estate.

But things don’t go as planned at first, beginning with the nonstop bug infestations in the kitchen, causing all her food prep unusable. If that’s not enough, a renowned food critic named Hiral Sen (Amara Karan) isn’t impressed after tasting the chef’s subsequent course menu for playing too safe. Andres even considers replacing her with another chef but she refuses to give up and begs him for a second chance, especially after she has risked everything to get to this stage. And that is, giving her two weeks to come up with something unique in her multi-course menu that will blow his mind.

Times are ticking as she goes through various trials and errors to get her menu right with the help of her new hire, sous-chef Lucia (Barbie Ferreira of TV’s Euphoria fame). Later, after stumbled upon a secret garden, she began to experiment with all the peculiar ingredients with taste tests.

No doubt that House of Spoils benefits from Ariana DeBose, who delivers a game performance as the unnamed chef and she’s the main reason that keeps me invested in her character’s plight venturing on her own. She is also backed by solid support, namely Arian Moayed in his perfectly obnoxious turn as the chef’s business partner and restaurateur Andres.

Cinematographer Eric Lin, in the meantime, does a good job capturing the visual delights of haute cuisine with mouthwatering names like “beet-cured trout with roasted baby beets, trout caviar and pickled berries” and “spicy soup of sprouting greens”. The movie works best when it focuses on the chef’s struggle trying her best to make sure everything runs smooth in the world of a cutthroat restaurant business.

Too bad the horror parts turn out to be a hit-or-miss affair with some visually repulsive scenes of strangely mouldy foods and typical things-that-go-bump-in-the-night moments. Cody and Krudy throw in a few obligatory jump scares but most of them feel forceful. The subplot surrounding the witchcraft and the estate’s mysterious previous owner played by Imola Gáspár are disappointingly tame in their executions, making me feel like I’m streaming a PG-13 rather than a supposedly R-rated movie. How I wish the co-directors would place the same passion in the supernatural horror angle as they successfully did for bringing out the best in DeBose in her scene-stealing lead performance and the absorbing story of her culinary journey.

It’s a pity that House of Spoils chose to spoil its final course with an underwhelming third act that doesn’t justify the promising setup. The movie could have used better ingredients to turn the full-course meal into an unforgettable mix-and-match feast both visually and narratively speaking. Instead, it was rather a half-baked effort that fizzled midway through the half of a main course.

House of Spoils is currently streaming on Prime Video.