After spending the last decade directing episodes of critically acclaimed shows like Game of Thrones, Shameless, and Succession, Mark Mylod is making a return to film with the satirical thriller The Menu. Following a group of wealthy diners—including Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult—in a claustrophobic culinary experience curated by commanding Chef Slowik (Ralph Fiennes), the Emmy-winner says the script for The Menu was impressive enough to pull him back into filmmaking.

“It really is a great ride. Obviously, I’m promoting the film. But the script really was just a fantastically fun ride that felt endlessly surprising and inventive,” Mylod told the Academy A.frame’s Alex Welch.

Co-written by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy (who worked with Mylod on Succession), the director says the dark comedy’s tone was “a beautiful thing” and what ultimately drew him to the project.

“The absolute hook for me was the script’s tone. I’m obsessed with tone and with explorations of flawed characters. The Menu was this beautiful thing, where the dark comedy and the thriller-horror elements really meshed together. This might sound kind of big-headed, but I could just see the right way to do it,” he said.

Mylod Shares Movies That Inspired The Menu

     CJ Entertainment

While Mylod says that most scripts he came across would be pitched as “this movie meets that movie,” The Menu was something entirely unique. Reminiscent of Jordan Peele’s “work of complete genius” Get Out, The Menu aimed to combine the biting underlying satire with “more genre-specific horror elements.”

Looking more toward cinematic influences over tonal ones, Mylod pulled inspiration for The Menu from both classic and modern film.

“When I wanted to figure out how to weaponize a single-location setting, I went back to Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel. What I was so struck by, particularly, was the sense of culpability of the guests in that film,” the director said of the 1962 Mexican surrealist film about guests who find themselves unable to leave an upscale dinner.

Some influences, however, are probably a little more familiar: Mylod also cites Bong Joon-ho’s acclaimed 2019 black comedy thriller Parasite and the 1990 film adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery as inspiration for the film.

“I also looked at Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite. The way he weaponized the texture of the central house in that film was huge influence on me, as was his use of light.

“I thought about Misery, too, in terms of how it uses a contained space to create tension but still keeps everything cinematic, which could be a bit of a paradox in most cases. All those films were really inspiring to me,” he added.

Interested connoisseurs can get a taste of The Menu in theaters beginning November 18.