In ‘COUP!’ find a sharp ‘comedy of menace,’ with Peter Sarsgaard and Billy Magnussen

It’s the early days of the 1918 pandemic when a mysterious new chef descends on a wealthy family’s estate in the new film “COUP!”

The chef, played by Peter Sarsgaard, is a worldly and questioning sort with a mischievous streak who torments his employer, Billy Magnussen, a self-styled progressive journalist looking out for the plight of the worker from his gilded fortress. As the world shuts down around them and the grounds become ever more isolated, tensions continue to rise with both comedic and tragic outcomes.

“I fell in love with it right away,” Magnussen said.

But “ COUP! ”, in theaters Friday, is the kind of original script that doesn’t often see the light of day. Its tonal and aesthetic inspirations range from the works of playwright Harold Pinter to Luis Buñuel’s “The Exterminating Angel” and the genre-bending work of the Coen brothers. So, when co-writers and directors Austin Stark and Joseph Schuman asked Magnussen if he was interested, the actor went a step further. He brought his production company HappyBad Bungalow into the fold.