Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Year: 2022
Rating: PG-13
Length: 139 minutes / 2.31 hours
Hollywood has woefully underutilized the mystery genre for some time. It probably doesn’t help that there aren’t a lot of mysteries being written that have been adapted to the big screen. The two modern examples that come to mind are Gone Girl (2014) and The Girl on the Train (2016) but they’re darker than the classic mysteries by Agatha Christie. That Hollywood is still releasing movies based on Christie’s works (like Murder on the Orient Express (2017)) or Christie-adjacent works (like See How They Run (2022)) shows there’s a desire for ensemble-based mysteries. Glass Onion (2022) is the breath of fresh air in this somewhat stagnant genre.
I’m glad that Knives Out (2019) did well enough to warrant a sequel with Daniel Craig’s fantastic character, Benoit Blanc. Glass Onion takes that same humor and applies it in a biting satire against the hyper-wealthy and “influencer” types that all need to be taken down a peg anyway. Of course, this is in alignment with other satires of the ultra-rich that also came out this year: The Menu (2022) and Triangle of Sadness (2022). Fortunately, all three movies are fantastic and I enjoyed every one of them for the social commentary they provide.
As far as mysteries go, Glass Onion does a fantastic job of providing a setup and a midpoint twist that changes the whole perspective of the entire film. It still has the necessary trappings of these kinds of mysteries, with the “someone on this island is the murderer” locked room setup. However, the execution of these genre tropes was quite entertaining. I hope these Benoit Blanc mysteries keep coming because they are now a “must-watch” in my book. Rian Johnson certainly has a goldmine here.
A comedic mystery poking fun at rich influencers, I give Glass Onion 4.0 stars out of 5.
