2020’s “Promising Young Woman” was Emerald Fennell’s filmmaking debut, a uniquely stylish and sharp-edged condemnation of rape culture. The director’s screenplay won her a well-deserved Oscar and announced a striking new voice in modern cinema. After writing six episodes of the excellent television show “Killing Eve”, Fennel is back with her sophomore directing effort, “Saltburn”, a masterfully wicked character thriller with a refreshing fearlessness that is missing from most of today’s motion pictures.

Armed with a Dickensian name and slithering around the film like a Patricia Highsmith character, Barry Keoghan is Oliver Quick, an Oxford student on scholarship who becomes fixated with wealthy and handsome schoolmate Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi). Felix takes a shine to Oliver, as he sees (or it appears) the young man doesn’t have the natural charm and charisma that makes it so easy to make friends and lovers; bringing him along when drinking and partying with friends, who are put off by Oliver. Feeling sorry for him, Felix invites him to stay for the summer in his stately manor of Saltburn, a sprawling old world mansion with its own lake, meadow, and a maze right out of Stephen King’s “The Shining”, a proper comparison giving the shocking cruelty the grassy labyrinth will later reveal.

Felix proclaims his family lineage “inspired half of Evelyn Waugh’s novels.”, a claim that Fennel’s screenplay has cheeky fun once we meet this strange clan. Rosamund Pike is terrific as Felix’s mother, a woman living on her privilege and memories of being a model. Working her way around lines such as, “I have a complete and utter horror of ugliness,” the actress represents a woman detached from the reality of her world. The irony being that her unaddressed emotional loneliness is caused by the inherent ugliness of the people that surround her.

Richard E. Grant is Felix’s father, a seemingly kind man who is always one distant beat behind the conversations around him. Grant has long been a proper character actor whose presence highlights any film. As the “head” of this isolated clan, Grant holds a good deal of the film’s humor until Fennel allows us to see a man who is forced to open his eyes to the realities of his crumbling family. In the final act, the performance becomes incredibly moving in a moment that is, at once, tender and heartbreaking.

Alison Oliver plays Felix’s sister Venetia, a young woman who is contemptuous of the new interloper, but is intoxicated by his surprising come-ons. The moment where Oliver seduces her outside in the cold night achieves a comically vicious and playful eroticism. The director is having fun with her audience, but doesn’t play nice as she crafts the scene with a puckish (and devious) sense of humor.

Archie Madekwe is catty perfection as the American cousin who resents Oliver being allowed into the makeshift family, as this is formerly his role and he refuses to give way to Felix’s new “pet project” while Carey Mulligan has a delightfully funny cameo as a damaged family friend who has long overstayed her welcome.