The film plays out like a smarter if less extreme version of Saltburn.
There have been lots of great thriller movies made about strangers ingratiating themselves into the life of a wealthy person and/or their families as part of a social-climbing scheme.
An early example is Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter’s ’60s drama The Servant, but since then there has been Barry Lyndon, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Saltburn and the Oscar-winning Parasite.
This is because it’s an ingenious blueprint for a story. When these films work best, the audience is compelled and even sort of roots for their anti-heroes, despite them often acting in underhanded, unethical ways to get what they want.
After all, who can begrudge these characters for wanting more out of their lives, for desiring a part of the wealth often being hoarded by others – who may have also acted unscrupulously to achieve their high social position?
Another recent example of this sub-genre of story is the 2023 darkly comic thriller Coup!, recently added to NOW Cinema and Sky Cinema.
Set amid the 1918 influenza pandemic in the United States, the film begins with a mysterious man hovering over a dead body, before stealing the deceased’s identification papers.
The man, now going by Floyd Monk (and played by the excellent Peter Sarsgaard, with a lovely southern drawl), then boards a ferry to an island. This is to take up an offer to the dead man to be the chef of a wealthy family’s mansion.
The home belongs to a muckraker journalist named J.C. Horton (Billy Magnussen), who is not quite the progressive he makes out in his columns, and his partner Julie (Sarah Gadon), a playwright turned housewife, who live there with their two young children.
Little by little, Floyd begins to turn J.C.’s other servants and family against the journalist. All the while, Floyd begins challenging J.C.’s authority more openly.
Peter Sarsgaard in Coup!
Coup! gives Sarsgaard, one of our great character actors, a real chance to shine.
Often cast as creepy, sinister figures, Floyd fits in with the actor’s previous work. But those who have seen The Lost Daughter or even Sarsgaard being interviewed will know that he can also be extremely charismatic, something which is deployed well here.
After all, without a megawatt charm, how could Floyd be expected to trigger the titular event?
Also Magnussen – as evident from Game Night – is one of those performers with naturally funny bones. Co-writers and directors Austin Stark and Joseph Schuman mine lots of humour from his character’s befuddlement at how his life falls apart around him, partly due to his interloper new servant but also because of his own doing.
While Coup! never really comes close to reaching the shock level of Saltburn, it does have a lot more on its mind.
Its influenza pandemic setting evokes memories of living through Covid-19, something which helps its class warfare story feel that bit more timely and resonant.
Plus, the way Coup! plays out, Stark and Schuman cleverly twist audiences’ expectations about the character of Floyd against them – before delivering a darker-than-expected gut-punch of an ending that hits hard because it feels like what might actually happen were this scenario to play out in real life.
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How to watch Coup!
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Coup! is available to watch on NOW Cinema and Sky Cinema in the UK and Ireland.
If you want to watch it but save cash, you could use this technique with an Amazon Fire Stick to save money.
The trick is something called ‘leapfrogging’, which is a way to skip between shorter, cheaper subscriptions to watch what you want to watch without signing up for expensive year-long contracts.
For example, you can get a basic Netflix package for £6.99, and stream what you want to watch via your Fire Stick and cancel it before your next bill.
You can then take advantage of the free trials of other services without signing up for them, all from the same place on your Fire Stick, so it’s super easy and convenient.
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- Netflix has just added one of 2024’s most powerful drama films
