But before we properly meet the pompous, hypocritical J.C. and his rather less stuck-up wife Julie (Sarah Gadon), we see Peter Sarsgaard trimming his mustache before a mirror, messing with another man’s passport portrait, and bidding farewell to a corpse before taking on that corpse’s identity: that of Floyd Monk, newly employed to be the chef at the Horton estate, which shall eventually go into a form of lockdown that allows Monk to usurp Horton’s authority over his other servants (Horton insists on calling them “staff,” as if that means anything), his family, and much else.
Sarsgaard adopts a delightfully plummy Southern accent as the cheerfully spiteful rebel who enjoys tweaking propriety at every opportunity. Displaying a missing index finger that resulted from an injury he is proud to say he suffered on San Juan Hill, he can barely resist a sneer and eye-roll when Horton observes, “We are against mechanized mass slaughter here.” He can’t resist testing how far on thin ice he can skate, as when he stage-whispers “Why don’t you kiss my ass, nancy boy” to J.C. and, when asked WHAT he just said, revises it to “Why don’t we get some sassafras for the boy.” He plays three-card-monte with Horton’s young daughters and allows Julie to play poker with him and the staff. We eventually learn of the real indignation behind Monk’s pose, and once the character’s anger is compelled to emerge, the indignation is briefly bracing.
That indignation doesn’t really end up getting this representative of the underclass anywhere. (That’s putting it mildly.) And it’s a bumpy road to get to it. Mrs. McMurray (Kristine Nielsen), the imperious head of the household help, is righteously skeptical of Monk, so the chef contrives to get her out of the way with help from some mildly toxic mushrooms. It’s when Mrs. McMurray reacts to the dosing that the movie shows its central flaw. Breaking into a sweat, she begins chanting, “The power of Christ compels you,” and then pukes pea-green onto J.C. This pointless “Exorcist” reference isn’t a third as clever as the moviemakers seem to believe it is and reflects a tiresome self-satisfied tone that is made a fair bit more tolerable by Sarsgaard’s juicy lead performance.