Nick Stahl cooks for his life in What You Wish For trailer

There's just something about a kitchen that lends itself so well to thrillers and it's not just all the fire, knives and blunt instruments all around (though that certainly helps). Whether you're dealing with the most ubiquitous fast food place or the highest levels of cuisine, the high stakes (not steaks) world of cooking can be a killer. In the upcoming film What You Wish For, that idea certainly looks like it will be put to the test and taken to another level as you can see in the recently release trailer from Magnet.

Here's how the company describes the picture on the film's official site: "Ryan (Nick Stahl) is a talented, down-on-his-luck chef with crushing gambling problems. Circumstances being what they are, he leaves town in a hurry for the safe haven of an unnamed Latin American country where his friend Jack (Brian Groh), a more prestigious chef with his own unique troubles, welcomes him into his home. Ryan has no idea how Jack’s able to afford his extravagant lifestyle cooking for the elite in paradise; he doesn’t want to feel envious, yet he can’t help but want this life for himself as well. Soon, a grim twist of fate will give that to him. Ryan assumes his friend’s identity and soon discovers just what Jack’s been doing to maintain the lifestyle he so desperately craved."

The film comes from writer-director Nicholas Tomnay whose last movie The Perfect Host came out back in 2010. That film featured a thief who wound up in the home of David Hyde Pierce's character who captured the crook and threw a madcap dinner party. It's a wild, twisty turny yarn that kept audiences guessing, so it will be interesting to see how much of that comes through in What You Wish For.

Stahl has been acting since he was a kid with appearances in Disturbing Behavior and Bully. He also played John Connor in Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines and the Yellow Bastard in Sin City. More recently he has appeared in horror projects like Fear The Walking Dead, What Josiah Saw and the Let The Right One In series.

It's been an interesting time for chef or cook centered horror thrillers. The Menu starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Fiennes, Nicholas Hoult and John Leguizamo, brought that real life intensity to terrifying places. But there have also been flicks like 2022's Fresh starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan as well as the 2023 Thai film Hunger which can be seen on Netflix. If you're looking for a way more over the top take on culinary killers that swaps the fancy table clothes for paper napkins, do yourself a favor and watch Jackie Kong's 1987 bizarre masterpiece Blood Diner.

The What You Wish For deadly dinner party will also feature Tamsin Topolski, Brian Groh, Randy Vasquez, Penelope Mitchell and Juan Carlos Messier. The film played at Fantastic Fest and will be distributed through Magnet on VOD May 31.