Emerald Fennell goes from Promising Young Women to dismantling young men in this dark comedy set in a debauched mansion. Let’s call it Downtown Abbey.

Saltburn follows Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), an Oxford student who befriends the aristocratic Felix (Jacob Elordi) and spends the summer at his family’s titular country estate. The story moves from the scholastic to the orgiastic as darkness descends on Saltburn, and Oliver sneakily ingratiates himself with a wealthy family (Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant and Alison Oliver) in an estate of panic.

The result is The Talented Mr. Ripley meets Absolutely Fabulous, a perpetually pickled treatise on obsession that pulls no punches in its on-trend mockery of the upper classes. Narratively speaking, Saltburn is on shakier foundations, and like Oliver it risks outstaying its welcome. And the film is seemingly undecided on whether it wants us to despise or pity the family. It seeks to switch our sympathies from Oliver to the Cattons, but fails to pull off the twist implied by his Dickensian surname.

The movie shares those literary and classical references with Promising Young Woman, alongside its garish colours and ironic pop songs (not many directors could get away with using The Cheeky Girls’ ‘Have a Cheeky Christmas’). But where Cassie proved a morally dubious yet ultimately coherent protagonist, Oliver’s motivations appear to dwangle to and fro (especially when dancing naked to Sophie Ellis-Bextor). At a certain point he ceases to be a real person, and Keoghan’s performance gets lost somewhere in Saltburn’s hedonistic hedge maze.

But as long as you don’t think too hard about the plot, the film is riotously entertaining, with Pike’s delivery and Keoghan’s face vying for the biggest laughs. It is seductively shot and goes to some interesting places, even if it doesn’t end up in one. This is a dizzying country pile of morbid humour that prioritises style over substance, but that works just fine when your style is as rich as Saltburn.