Harlan Thrombey, patriarch of the Thrombey family, is dead. The police have concluded his death was a suicide, but gentleman detective Benoit Blanc has been hired to investigate the possibility of foul play. This crime(?) is not wanting for suspects, as on the night of the incident the entire family had gathered at Harlan's semi-secluded mansion for his birthday, and Harlan conveniently gave pretty much every family member some sort of motive over the course of the party. And if the cozy mystery set-up wasn't obvious enough, Harlan had amassed his fortune through detective novels.
The movie begins with Blanc and the police questioning the family on what happened on the night of Harlan's death. This gives us an effective overview of the characters, their relationships, the events of the night, and the layout of the house.
The investigation eventually get to Harlan's nurse and our de facto protagonist, Marta, who has an interesting character quirk: lying causes her to puke. Of course, even though she can only tell the truth, that doesn't mean she has nothing to hide. The scenes where she needs to work around her condition to bend the truth are some of the most entertaining sequences in the film.
Knives Out begins like a traditional cozy mystery, but once Marta is questioned, the entire focus of the movie shifts to her efforts to keep her secrets from Blanc. Consequently, the bulk of the movie plays out more like a modern thriller. The finale then brings us back to a classic denouement, and reveals that not everything was as it seemed. So is Knives Out a cozy detective story that adopts the body of a thriller to make it more exciting and palatable to general audiences, or a modern thriller that wears a cozy facade to give itself a unique edge against other thrillers? I'd say the former, but some might say the latter.
Either way, the movie is not the thoroughbred homage to classic detective fiction that its marketing so desperately wants it to be. It certainly has better plotting and cluing than your run-of-the-mill thriller. Yet the fact that both the plotting and cluing are good, but not great or brilliant, will likely make the puzzle relatively easy for the genre-savvy and/or attentive viewer. Things can get a bit convoluted and silly, but not more than you'd expect from any other detective novel. Fortunately, even if you see where the movie is going, the path to get there and family drama along the way still make it an entertaining watch.
The characters are... at about the level you'd get from a normal detective novel. Blanc doesn't have much to him besides a weird Southern accent; viewers looking for the next Sherlock or Poirot will likely be disappointed. Some family members get barely any development or screentime, but these characters don't end up having much plot relevance. This is perhaps not the ideal outcome, but I'd say it was the best way for the movie to use its limited runtime. A couple of family members get development beyond their initial impressions, but unfortunately this development tends to be rushed and disjointed. The deepest character is, unsurprisingly, Marta. The movie's mystery fully comports with its message about Marta, so, at least in this one instance, I give credit to the movie for wonderfully blending puzzle with characterization.
The movie has an interesting atmosphere as it's distinctly modern—there are smartphones, for instance, and one family member accuses the other of being an "alt-right troll"—yet it still tries to abide by the rules of the traditional whodunnit. The investigation is based on logic, testimony, and Blanc's firsthand observations. There are no complicated forensics or clues based on electronics. As a result, the mystery has a timeless feel, but the movie is stuck squarely in 2019.
The last part of the movie I want to talk about is the setting. Most of the movie takes place in Harlan's mansion, which is a lovely modern analogue to the traditional English country house. It's large, lavishly decorated, and houses a secret or two that makes things interesting without trivializing things. It's a great backdrop to a movie that mostly involves people talking or investigating there.
The best description of Knives Out is that it's a decent detective novel. I wouldn't be surprised if it's one of the better original movie mysteries (I admittedly haven't delved too far into this medium), but I think it would be more for the lack of fantastic mystery movies than greatness on the part of Knives Out. I think textual media are vastly superior to visual media for the mystery genre, and there are indeed many mystery novels, comics, and video games that are much better than Knives Out. But every once in a while getting to see real people act out these silly murder stories that we love is a nice change of pace, and Knives Out certainly delivers a satisfactory performance if you're in that mood. I'm not sure it's worth the price of a movie ticket (and concessions), but it's definitely worth checking out once it's made its way to streaming platforms.
I have to agree with your thoughts as well. I remember being super-entertained at the theater during its run, but when I got back home and really recounted the events of the story in my mind --- it really wasn't that complex/complicated. Each trope/trick were all classic ones that had been used for eons in one form or another in other mystery books.
ReplyDeleteSo at the end of the day, the way I would describe Knives Out is that it was certainly "adequately competent". And it most certainly has to do with the fact that in the mystery movie space, there just weren't that many competition.