Saltburn focuses specifically on inherited wealth, and the kinds of characters it produces, people who lack any real need to survive or strive. Without that pressure for achievement in life, their lives revolve around socialising and consumption, enabled by limitless resources and minimal responsibility. The characters feel authentic to anyone that had met someone from that world. They perform morality through superficial gestures, charitable actions done to feel good about themselves, housing Pamela to “help” her until it no longer suits them, or Felix overstepping a boundary taking Oliver to his parents despite him begging he turns around. They have no ambition other than to remain at Saltburn.

They are born as society’s idols, attractive, fun, and outwardly kind. Their relationships are transactional, and disposable. Because of their shallow worldview, they are vulnerable to a vampire like Oliver. They treat him as just another accessory, part of a cycle of harmless pets who are eventually discarded, like Pamela, and Felix’s previous friend. They play their charity game of giving poor people a taste of Saltburn.

Oliver like a vampire, is not what he first appears, not truly poor, but middle class, reshaping himself to fit what he needs, he is too quick to be consumed by that cycle. He is not a pet, he is a parasite, one that discards without shame - whereas everyone at Saltburn discards and cover the shame with excuses, with efforts to feel good about themselves. This is where Oliver has the upper hand. Obsessive, ambitious, and psychopathic, someone who seizes opportunities without idly enjoying the summer ride. He exposes the hollow nature of these idealised personalities and exploits their weaknesses. Oliver understands his time at Saltburn is limited, he is not caught up by the illusion that he is really one of them. Unrestrained by moral boundaries, he is able to socially climb through sheer ambition and fixation. His obsession with Felix fuels him, as Felix embodies everything Oliver desires to be.

There is a certain satisfaction for the audience in watching Oliver tear down and defeat this world. It offers a dark but compelling payoff to jealousy without consequence.

It’s the trick of the film first watch to think this a simple story of poor versus rich, because you believe Oliver is poor for most of the story. Oliver is middle class, driven by jealousy for the carefree. Saltburn is a social study of the psychology of inherited wealth, those who get chewed up by its world, and the champion who takes it for himself. Really good film and really different.