Film Review — Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
★★★☆☆
World-famous detective Benoit Blanc joins a group of elites mysteriously summoned to a private island by an eccentric tech mogul.
“Subverting expectations” and “Rian Johnson” are practically synonymous at this point. Three years after Knives Out breathed new life into the murder mystery genre by turning it on its head, Johnson continues his attempts to shake up the establishment with little concern for those he might upset with his unconventional ways.
Glass Onion is exactly what you would expect from Johnson. Full of twists with an unusual story structure, populated by colourful characters and witty dialogue that unsubtly doubles as a conduit for the filmmaker’s own politics. For the most part, it’s another perfectly enjoyable romp, an engaging and, at times, a hilarious puzzle of a movie that will undoubtedly delight fans of the first.
But much like its titular centrepiece, the truth of Glass Onion is hiding in plain sight. This isn’t as impressive or as smart as you think it is. Like Bron’s high-tech island, there’s a noticeable emptiness to the wonder. The structure is lifted wholesale from the first, right down to the narrative-shifting twist, while the characters — as fun as they are — are far less vital, struggling to feel justified in sharp contrast to Harlan Thrombey’s dysfunctional dependants.
The biggest surprise, however, is that Glass Onion is exactly what you would expect from Johnson. And for a filmmaker famous for flipping the script I can’t help but be a little disappointed at my lack of subverted expectation.
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