Hilarity and Murder Afoot in ‘Knives Out’

There is a sweet spot where the classic whodunit (think: Deathtrap or Gosford Park or The Cat and the Canary or Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap) meets comedy (think: Murder by Death or Clue or Private Eyes). And it’s writer-director Rian Johnson’s great affection for and shrewd understanding of that intersection between murder and laughter where audiences will find him in his cinematic wheelhouse, as evidenced by the brilliant Knives Out.

On the morning following his 85^th birthday celebration, bestselling mystery writer Harlan Thrombey is found dead in his study—the victim of a seemingly self-inflicted throat slashing. But when renowned,  idiosyncratic private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) shows up on the scene, it’s quickly established that he suspects foul play, with each member of the immediate—and pathologically dysfunctional—Thrombey family and household staff suspect in his murder. Flanked by local law enforcement—the straight-shooting Lieutenant Elliot (Lakeith Stanfield) and Trooper Wagner (Noah Segan)—Blanc questions each member of the Thrombey clan, during which  murderous motivations aplenty come to light as each spins a web of self-serving lies. Like a well-worn Agatha Christie paperback, clues are uncovered, red herrings misdirect, and the suspect list grows—then narrows—then grows again, with Johnson skillfully turning narrative tables before the big drawing room denouement.

The acting ensemble—a virtual who’s who of several generations of reputable Hollywood actors—includes Chris Evans, Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Ana de Armas, Katherine Langford, Riki Lindhome, Jaeden Martell, and the venerable Christopher Plummer, who—despite his early demise—has much to do in the film’s ample flashbacks. Even veteran character actors K Callan and M. Emmet Walsh show up for memorable bit parts, as does actor-director-puppet voice actor Frank Oz in the role of Harlan’s attorney. It’s enormous fun to watch these actors let loose onscreen with each other as evidenced to no greater effect than the “Eat Shit” scene that went viral from the film’s first trailer.

Each member of the cast is in top form—thanks in large part to Johnson’s astute ability to write good characters and snappy dialogue. Craig and de Armas are, arguably, the film’s leads and do much of the heavy lifting, their characters and performances serving as nice contrasts to each other. Craig is all wild-eyed energy and an oversized southern drawl—think a chicken-fried facsimile of Christie’s Hercule Poirot—while de Armas earnestly plays the more subdued moral center of the film as Marta, Harlan’s doe-eyed private nurse and surprising confidant. The rest of the cast, although largely relegated to the kind of supporting roles common to the ensemble whodunit, are each put to good use, with Johnson giving every single actor in his troupe some juicy material to work with—two, in particular.

Evans—in a nice change of pace from the do-gooder action hero roles that have largely defined his career in recent years—goes full-tilt rogue as Harlan’s trust-fund grandson, Ransom. He’s smarmy and snarky, swaggering and sneering throughout the film with gleeful abandon. Curtis also gets to flex her acting range nicely as Harlan’s eldest child, Linda, a driven real estate mogul who envisions herself as family matriarch in the wake of her father’s passing. She’s all business—crisp, and cutting right to the point—yet Curtis manages to use the character’s no-bullshit gravitas to great comedic effect, reminding audiences that she’s a deft comedienne who knows how to deliver a funny line. I’m also going to give a well-deserved shout-out here to Segan, who really proves himself to be a scene-stealer several times in the film, with genuinely funny outbursts that find his giddy superfan to the late mystery writer extraordinaire at odds with the dignified reserve required of his occupation.

From the opening scene—a wide shot of Thrombey’s stately (if not slightly sinister) mansion nestled in an autumnal-hued wooded countryside setting that’s accompanied by Nathan Johnson’s dramatic orchestral score—Johnson aims for a grandiose and archetypal cinematic composition. Setting is integral to Johnson’s visual storytelling, with the Thrombey family mansion dripping in an old-world New England neo-gothic aesthetic that’s almost a character onto itself. “The guy practically lives in a Clue board,” observes Stanfield’s Detective Elliot at one point in the film. Indeed, the house is cluttered with old-fashioned flamboyances like antique dolls and overstuffed furniture, ornate moldings and stained glass windows, and a writer’s study on the attic floor that will make any author—established or aspiring—drool. There’s even a spectacular chair made of knives that not only illustrates the film’s title but perhaps not-so-subtly suggests the deadly power grab at play à la Game of Thrones. Hats off to production designer David Crank, aided to immeasurable extent by David Schlesinger’s impeccable set décor, for a set design that really pops and saturates the film with much of its visual ambiance.

But the biggest star of Knives Out is Johnson’s masterful, slyly subversive script, which transcends the typical wink-wink, slapstick genre spoof. It’s fiendishly funny while remaining true to its classical drawing-room mystery roots, with a cunning labyrinth of a plot that never weighs it down or insults the audience’s ability to keep up. Johnson expertly toys with his audience’s narrative expectations—especially in the film’s second act when the reading of Harlan’s will drops a bombshell and the proverbial knives come out—allowing him an opportunity to layer in some razor-sharp commentary on upper-class entitlement and Trumpian politics. In one of the film’s funnier satiric threads, for example, the Thrombeys inability to remember Marta’s Latin American country of origin—despite their demonstrative declarations that she’s a member of the family—cuts to the bone of current national discourse on immigration. That Johnson’s able to take such shrewd political potshots without the heavy-handedness that might otherwise detract from the simple pleasures of the film’s popcorn entertainment pedigree is the true masterstroke of Knives Out.

The game is afoot, dear readers, and in Knives Out it’s best to surrender to being a pawn masterfully manipulated by Johnson’s ingenuity and adept juggling of his byzantine plot. By removing the stodgy seriousness of the standard whodunit without sacrificing its familiar conventions, he repositions and deconstructs the genre without descending into parody or losing sight of the source material that inspired this supersized romp. In the end, though, Johnson proves that people—like a poison-filled syringe—can be just as toxic.