Best pals Joan and Michael invite their dearest friends over for a cordial dinner to discuss the passing of Joan’s husband Neil. But as each guest arrives, dark secrets are revealed and murder is definitely on the menu.

Good food tells a story. Whether it’s the familiar comfort of a home-cooked meal or a finely-tuned progression of flavor told through a dozen courses, food communicates not just the deftness of the chef’s technique, but also what they value. Murder Made Easy, from writer/director David Palamaro, offers up a 4-course menu of murder and deceit. Will it satisfy our hunger for blood or leave us craving more?

After an appetizer of exposition that introduces us to our main characters, Joan (Jessica Graham) and Michael (Christopher Soren Kelly ), as they discuss how to tackle the issue of their relationship that has bloomed in the wake of her being recently widowing with their dinner guests, the first of whom, Marcus (Edmund Lupinski), arrives shortly thereafter. They indulge in a little light conversation over their shared interest in acting and theater until dinner is served. The meal goes as expected until Joan’s demeanor changes, chastising Marcus over an incident where he thwarted her husband’s efforts to get a promotion with his drunken belligerence. The wine is his undoing and this instance proves no different as he collapses to the floor, clutching his heart. Joan and Michael look down toward the camera and in a gesture that seems aimed squarely at the viewer, feign concern until they drop the act and reveal their true intentions. Joan has a hitlist and everyone on it has been invited to enjoy their last meal.

And so the film continues as the couple enacts their revenge on those they believe mistreated Joan’s late husband and herein lies the film’s major issue. Murder Made Easy is rigidly-constructed film; a character enters, they have a bit of banter establishing their personality and their history with our protagonists, dinner is served (accompanied by a title card describing the dish), Joan accuses their guest of their perceived offense, and they are murdered and dragged out of the way to make room of the next character. Feeling almost like an anthology with a narrative that doesn’t acknowledge anything that happened more than five minutes prior except to wink at the audience when a previous victim comes up in conversation, there is little sense of flow here. Outside of its climax which I’ll touch on later, Murder Made Easy’s segments have no impact on one another and could be placed in any arbitrary order, creating a sense of stagnation. Like a four-course meal of variations on the onion ring, what begins as relatively satisfying quickly devolves into a predictable slog.

Murder Made Easy might be most accurately described as a comedy, but while the subject matter is dark, I would not consider it a dark comedy. In practice, the comedy seems very “sitcom” with each character spouting off observational humor filtered through the narrowly-defined lens of their single definable character trait. For Marcus, it’s his inflated perceptions of his acting talent, for one of our other victims, Cricket (Emilia Richeson), who seems to be channeling a late 90s Drew Barrymore and whose scenes are among the most unforgivably aggitating, it’s veganism and pacifism. While the performances are expressive in that improv sense, predicated upon a singular concept, each of them feels like a caricature of an LA archetype, ostensibly varied but ultimately just offering different flavors of narcissism. The murders themselves are a sort of contrivance, a means to whisk these characters off once they’ve outlived their usefulness so that the spotlight can be cast on the next. Joan and Michael fair a bit better, being given more time to develop, with Joan hiding her callousness behind a warm facade which is contrasted nicely by Michael’s passionate outbursts, but neither character receives much development throughout the film. Until the climax, that is. The film arrives at its climax through a series of improbabilities, that that can be forgiven to some degree due to a healthy dose of foreshadowing and allusion. What didn’t sit as well for me was the stark, somber note the film tries to go out on, which feels unearned and discordant following the light-hearted serial killing romp that precedes it.

Murder Made Easy was never going to be an exceptional film. It doesn’t have the nuance or the novelty to stand out among the pack, but it is rarely offensive in any given scene. Where it falls apart is in establishing cohesion, in pulling together all of these elements into a grander concept that gives the viewer a sense that they’ve gone on a journey with characters who have grown and overcome adversity. Whether that takes the form of slaying a dragon or simply finding the strength to stab a knife into someone’s head, we want to feel as though the experiences we’ve witnessed have left an impact on our protagonists and when you encounter a film like this with a rinse and repeat structure that would be no more or less coherent if things occurred in a completely different order, that sense of progress is shattered. Revenge might a dish best served cold, but Murder Made Easy is frustratingly tepid.