This mostly enjoyable mash-up of Rebecca, Brideshead Revisited and The Talented Mr Ripley is the second feature from Emerald Fennell, following Promising Young Woman (for which she bagged the 2021 Best Original Screenplay Oscar). If that film was fired up with feminist fervour, Fennell is on slightly shakier ground here with the tale of a scholarship student falling for a wealthy peer and his ancestral home, the gothic mansion of the title.

Barry Keoghan gives a magnetic and chameleonic performance as Oliver Quick, a nerdy, unfashionable fellow who spends a lonely few months at Oxford University before he wins the sympathy of the most popular chap in his college, Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), who takes him under his wing. After a fairly so-so start, Saltburn sparks into life when we meet Felix’s bonkers, uber-rich brood during a spellbinding summer of fun. Oliver piques the interest of Felix’s former ‘It Girl’ mother (Rosamund Pike), genial father (Richard E Grant) and nymphomaniac sister (Alison Oliver). However, his American cousin (Archie Madekwe) eyes the newcomer warily; he too is dependent on the family’s generosity to get by.

Fennell’s film is a twisted and darkly funny if overly predictable story of subservience and snobbery, benefitting from a superb comic turn from Pike, as well as Fennell’s previous leading lady, Carey Mulligan, who features in a small, scene-stealing role as a much-mocked family friend. There’s an alluring sense of mischief and abundance of style but, despite its many entertaining moments, Saltburn ultimately feels less than the sum of its parts, while it thoroughly loses the plot by the end.

Saltburn screens at Southbank Centre, Thursday 5 October, and Prince Charles Cinema, Sunday 8 October as part of the BFI London Film Festival; in cinemas from Friday 17 November.