Fantastic Fest ’23: What You Wish For offers a balanced meal of thrills and moral decay

What You Wish For. // Courtesy of Fantastic Fest

This is part of our coverage of new genre films premiering at Austin’s Fantastic Fest. 

Humanity’s obsession with food makes for good cinematic storytelling. The schadenfreude and sensory overload of Campbell Scott and Stanley Tucci’s Big Night. The ravishing artistry of Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast. The stunning feat of madcap and majesty that is Peter Greenway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. 

On that last note, social commentary and satire have also come to define the more recent renaissance of food-based filmmaking. This includes the…ickier iterations, like The Platform, Fresh and The Menu, all of which feature both great cooking with stomach-turning palate cleansers. Nicholas Tomnay’s What You Wish For is a comparatively different beast.

Slowing things down to a simmer, it tells a relatively simple Twilight Zone-ish tale of a man in over his head. 

Ryan (Nick Stahl) is one of those people the world passed by. Once a promising culinary student, he now spends his days cooking in the back of a chain hotel restaurant, churning out an endless stream of roast chickens. As if that weren’t enough to put him in a deep depression, the substantial amount of gambling debt he has accrued is. On a whim he skips the country, meeting up with an old cooking pal, Jack.

As with all things that seem too good to be true, there’s a catch. Something seems off about Jack’s exuberant lifestyle, seomthing confirmed when Jack vanishes altogether. Shocked and desperately in need of cash, Ryan decides he’ll take Jack’s place and reap the benefits. He just needs to cater an elegant dinner party first, which has very specific and deliberate tastes he might have some trouble swallowing.

This is Tomnay’s long-awaited sophomore film, following his well-received, nimble thriller The Perfect Guest, starring David Hyde Pierce. Tomnay’s knack for arranging plot points like pieces on a chessboard continues here, but also shows mature restraint. Most of that can be attributed to Stahl’s low-key performance, which fits with the everyman he’s portraying. Ryan is unremarkable save for the fact that he’s an excellent cook. When he’s in the kitchen, he blooms.

Tomnay also handles tone expertly. What You Wish For is a thriller, with Ryan finding himself in life-or-death situations. Yet it’s all relayed in the most straightforward manner possible. This isn’t a detriment, but a strength. By letting things unfold in a more natural tone gives more weight to everything that happens. While the threat of violence hangs around any corner, the latter half of the movie becomes a dizzying display of culinary feats and tension. 

Your experience with What You Wish For depends on what you want the film to be. There’s social commentary and moral questions, but not the way movies of this kind typically offer. Its down-the-middle delivery may turn some viewers off, but those who stay with it may be delighted by its Twilight Zone structure. The morality tale on display and the performances therein are just as delectable as the gourmet dishes on display.

It’s a bloody good tale that shouldn’t not be missed.