Film of the Week – Knives Out

A murder mystery with a twist. I know, most murder mysteries have twists and turns to keep the detectives guessing for dramatic effect and the audience engaged, but Knives Out brings a unique twist to the chessboard. All the players behave as you would during any other investigation, setting up the motives, and the little quirks of each person’s personality making each and every single person an unreliable narrator, and therefore a suspect.

Knives Out is one of those films where to review, would be to spoil, as any fully formed opinions would revolve around the major parts of the movie, where the most spoilers sit within. I can say I thoroughly enjoyed it and it did make me chuckle a couple of times, and the big twist was certainly an eye-opener. With every twist in films, no matter how big and “out of the blue” they appear, they’re always set up throughout, and Knives Out is no exception. Of course, during the first watch I didn’t pick up on them, but upon seeing other spoiler filled video reviews, one explaining how the twist was set up perfectly. I do want to go back and re-watch the film just to look out for the pieces of evidence that points to the twist, so I can piece it altogether in my mind.

With every murder mystery comes a brilliant detective, and Knives Out brings in Benoit Blanc, played superbly by Daniel Craig. His accent was a little hard to understand at first, but it grew on me over time. This is a star-studded film, with many big names, all playing their parts brilliantly – each one had me convinced they had committed the murder. After his long stint playing Captain America, this was a nice break away from the superhero genre and seeing him playing a spoilt playboy who developed sympathy for Marta Cabrera, Harlan Thrombey’s (the victim) nurse.

We don’t get many films focusing on a murder mystery, besides the feature length TV episode adaptation of Agatha Christi’s work, which one novel, Murder on the Orient Express was turned into a major cinematic film, but Knives Out is a fresh take on the genre. There are so many TV shows centred around a detective solving murders, with the odd episode here and there having a good twist which kept you guessing, and so Knives Out needed to stand out from the crowd. It certainly did that. Re-watching it, I may know what happens, that’s not going to steal anything away from my enjoyment.

To conclude without spoiling, Knives Out does get you thinking in more ways than one. Bringing together a big family comprised of totally different personality and world views all in one room for an extended period, will cause debates. It’s possible these views will cross over to the audience who’ll have their own opinions – whether the film was right or wrong to express a certain view, but that’s the point. The entire film is supposed to be taken subjectively to keep the mystery of who done the crime alive, never fading away. It’s designed to get you thinking down tracks to constantly divert your viewpoint, otherwise the mystery would be too easy, and they might as well have the killer announce themselves at the beginning of the film. I recommend Knives Out because anyone can enjoy it. It may be a part of the murder mystery genre, but ultimately anyone can get onboard with this film because of the vastly different perspectives each suspect reveal whether intentional or not.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)