Since its release last November, Saltburn has been my personal thermometer for determining how much I’ll get along with people. If you understood, or better yet reveled in, the film’s dark-as-night comedy, homoerotic overtones, and dedication to the sexually grotesque, this could be the start of a lovely friendship. If it put you off… well, I’m sure we’ll find something to talk about.
Lush has just gifted me another splendidly depraved tool of measurement for this: the Saltbomb, a bath bomb inspired directly by the movie. The scene it references contains the slurp heard ’round the world, so I doubt I need to remind you what the gist is — but just in case: Barry Keoghan’s Oliver secretly observes Jacob Elordi’s Felix, um, servicing himself to completion in the bathtub. When Oliver is later left alone in the bathroom while the tub empties, he kneels in it as if it’s an altar and slurps up what remains circling the drain. Delicious.
While this scene horrified and disgusted many, it absolutely tickled the nation’s perverts and weirdos (presently speaking). In the past three months, I have been subjected to numerous TikTok videos of people declaring with their chests that they’d drink Jacob Elordi’s salty bathwater if given the chance (maybe we need to calm down on that one, but I respect the masses’ wishes).
And while that kind of behavior would warrant restraining orders and court-mandated therapy in reality, Lush went ahead and said, “Hey, let’s help those little sickos live out their sick little fantasies.” Hence the Saltbomb, a combination of sea salt and coconut powder, which are supposed to make water milky and moisturizing but with a somewhat mineral… I want to say taste, but one should never actually consume bathwater. A salty vibe, if you will. To recreate the smell of the — you know.
Lush