Film Review: Knives Out

From the mind of Rian Johnson, comes an original Whodunnit with one of the most stacked casts I’ve ever seen, but is it any good?

Considering when this has been written, you can probably guess the answer to this, this film has released to critical acclaim and now there is even talk of a sequel/spin-off being in the works starring Daniel Craig. It’s a fresh, original film that is very clever and changes up the conventions you tend to see in a standard murder mystery story, unfortunately for me, I worked out the culprit fairly early on so perhaps wasn’t as engrossed as others in the screening I went to.

Regardless, there’s no denying that Knives Out is a really well-crafted film and you can tell that all the actors/actresses involved were having an absolute blast working with Rian Johnson and his script. The film is very funny, and the way that it weaves the various clues and plot threads to keep the audience on their toes is very well executed. Unlike most murder mysteries, Knives Out gives you a lot more information than you may expect early on. This was both a positive and a negative for me, although it was interesting seeing the story play out in this way, the fact all this information was given to us as an audience so early on meant I was expecting quite a few twists along the way, so they weren’t anywhere near as surprising as they perhaps could have been.

Rian Johnson is not the kind of film-maker to just stick to normal conventions, and I commend him for changing up the typical murder-mystery formula to make something fresh and exciting. It didn’t work for me on all levels, but it’s a film that I feel I will come to appreciate more as time goes on, and I’m very much looking forward to the newly-announced sequel!

Definitely worth picking up on home release.

I give Knives Out a 7.5/10.