Genre: Crime/Mystery
Premise: A family must answer questions about the suspicious death of their patriarch, who supposedly committed suicide on the night of his 85th birthday.
About: Knives Out played at festivals a couple months back, where it won over critics, receiving a 96% Rotten Tomatoes score. After experiencing a complicated response to his last film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Johnson decided to shuttle back from that far away galaxy and shoot a passion project, a story he’d been working on for ten years. He put together a great cast, shot the film, which finally hits theaters tomorrow.
Writer: Rian Johnson
Details: 129 pages
I’m a big Chicago Bulls fan dating back to the MJ days. More recently, we had a great player on our team named Derek Rose. And while everyone in the city loved Rose, he would occasionally say things that made you go, “Huh?” Like when the team was fighting to win a playoff series and Rose chose to sit out due to a questionable injury. When he was asked about it, he replied, “I’m sitting out so I won’t be sore during future meetings and my son’s graduation.” Huh?
This began a series of memes titled, “Derek Rose Says Stuff,” which highlighted any time Rose would say something that didn’t make any sense. I bring this up because this meme could just as easily be applied to Rian Johnson. “Rian Johnson Says Stuff.” Like when he came out weeks before The Last Jedi and proclaimed he had “zero interest in exploring Snoke.” Huh? The giant Emperor like character who’d been set up in the first movie?
Or “When I thought about it, Luke tossing the lightsaber over his shoulder was the only thing he would do.” Um, what?? The ONLY thing? As in, that was the only option in existence? “Rian Johnson Says Stuff” has now officially extended into the marketing campaign for Knives Out, as he was recently asked about whodunits: “I wanted to take the onus off of the viewer very early on to say don’t worry about solving this. As much as I love whodunits, I feel like that’s one of the weakest elements of them.” A whodunit where the director demands you not care who dunit? Okay.
Look, it’s no secret I’m not a fan of Johnson’s writing. I thought Looper was a disaster script and openly weeped when the folks at Disney gave him Episode 8. However, I do like the whodunit genre and I also like the idea of updating it. There are a lot of differences in investigating a crime in 2019 compared to 1919 and if the author can come up with a clever way to integrate a modern sensibility into the genre, who knows? Maybe this script is good. Let’s take a look.
There’s been a murder in Suh-vannah! (points to anyone who can name the reference)
Or a suicide. It’s a little confusing since 85 year old Howard Thrumbey’s neck was slit when the family found him. Usually when you see a slit neck, you think murder. But everyone here, including the police, assume Howard slit his own neck. Don’t ask me why.
The entire Thrumbey family was at the house for Howard’s birthday the night before. So the police come in to ask a few questions about the death as a formality. The major players are Linda, Thrombey’s oldest daughter, Walt, Thombey’s youngest son who ran his father’s publishing business, Jacob, Walt’s alt-right internet troll son, Joni, a Gwyneth Paltrow wannabe, Greantnana, Howard’s mother, and Ransom, the black sheep of the family.
Detective Elliot, who will be asking the questions, is joined by the mysterious (and famous) Benoit Blanc, a private investigator who will reveal later that he received an envelope full of money and a message to dig deep into this death because not everything about this family is what it seems. The investigation also includes one non-family member, Marta, Howard’s caretaker, who was quite close with him.
The entire first half of this movie is interviews. We interview every member of the family, ask what they remember about the previous night, and it all seems to add up. However, after the interviews are over, we flash back to learn that Marta was giving Howard his nightly medication when she realized she’d accidentally given him an overdose! Howard, realizing he had minutes left to live, tells Marta not to worry, and gives her a series of tasks to follow, which include being seen leaving, then sneaking back into the house later. This way, she won’t be a suspect. This means that we already know who killed Howard halfway into the movie.
Back in the present, the lawyer arrives and reads the will (major spoiler). Marta will be receiving EVERYTHING. Naturally, the family freaks out and demands a recount or whatever you do in these situations. The only person who seems to be enjoying himself is Ransom, who loves watching his family squirm. He offers Marta a ride home where he informs her he knows what she did. Which is fine. He doesn’t care if she gets his father’s inheritance, as long as he gets his share. So the two agree to work together.
But Blanc keeps digging as he feels a devout loyalty to the random envelope of money he received, and soon gets Ransom to admit what he knows about Marta. Marta is brought back in, tells Blanc she’s more than happy to confess. But Blanc tells her, no, there’s no need to confess. Because it’s someone else who did it! He then lays out to everyone what really happened that night, implicating the real criminal who did it, who is the last person we suspect! (not really).
“Knives Out” is similar to a lot of Rian Johnson’s movies in that there’s some good in here, there’s some bad in here, and the stuff in between either appeals to you or doesn’t, shaping your overall rating. I will say this. Johnson takes chances in his writing and he takes a major one here, when he informs us that Marta is the one who killed Howard halfway into the script.
This achieves a couple of things that make it different from your garden variety murder-mystery. For one, we shift the focus from ‘who did it?’ to ‘how is this going to play out?’ Also, since we now know what Marta did, the drama is now operating on the principle of dramatic irony. We know something all the other characters don’t which means we can participate in hoping that Marta’s mistake isn’t revealed.
Johnson then cleverly skyrockets the stakes by announcing Marta will be receiving the entire inheritance. Before she was just covering up her mistake. Now she’s covering up her mistake to receive hundreds of millions of dollars.
Another thing this choice achieves is that it takes our focus off of who did it, which allows for the final twist to be more impactful. If you spend an entire movie asking, “Who did it? Who did it? Who did it? Who did it?” the audience is going to be really demanding of the answer. But if they’re no longer asking who did it cause you’ve already told them, it’s a huge surprise when you reveal that someone else did it all along. So that was a really clever move by Johnson.
The script has two weaknesses, though. The setup takes way too long. A full hour. I was literally falling asleep trying to get through the first 60 pages. It was interview after interview of the family. And while almost everything we learn through these interviews is paid off later on in the script, you can’t help but wonder if Johnson could’ve cut the interviews in half or found a more entertaining way to convey all this information.
I’m guessing Johnson knew he’d get a killer cast and figured we’d be so delighted watching these actors go at it, we wouldn’t mind endless exposition scenes. And maybe that was the case. I can’t say since I’ve only read the script. But my experience has been when you start trying to convince yourself you can outrun basic storytelling tenets through your direction, you get into trouble.
The second issue is that the crime is convoluted. There’s a lot that goes into it. Character A tells Character B to go be seen, then sneak back in, and then we’re going to slit our throat to throw them off the scent of being over-drugged and Character C knew Character B would use a certain syringe so he switched the syringes and oh, but wait, there’s a toxicology report that could prove he was drugged so Character C burns down the toxicology building but then he didn’t need to because actually the drug Character B administered ended up NOT being the wrong drug, which means that Character A was never in danger of dying so had he not slit his own throat, he would’ve still been alive… and that’s just a fraction of it.
There’s a lot more to keep track of. And while I got most of it, I didn’t get all of it. I still don’t know why Howard had Marta leave then sneak back in. That part was confusing. I’m sure your enjoyment of this movie will depend heavily on whether all this stuff is clear or you’re like me and some of it is murky.
I’m sure the guy who proclaimed Luke throwing his lightsaber over his shoulder was the only thing Luke could’ve done in that moment will tell you it’s not about solving the mystery. It’s about the larger themes of the 1% versus the have-nots. And to a certain degree, that comes through. One of my favorite moments is when Meg, a snobby Vassar student working on a useless college degree talks to Marta after she’s inherited everything. She’s trying to get her to rethink accepting the money, pointing out that without her cut, Meg won’t be able to pay for tuition next year. Marta earnestly tells her, “You don’t have to worry about that. I’ll make sure you’re okay.” Meg’s realization that this woman who, ten minutes ago, was “the help,” is now in charge of her college tuition perfectly conveyed that theme.
But I can’t outrun the feeling that there’s a better ending in here somewhere. I thought maybe we’d get a Usual Suspects ending where Marta planned this from the jump. Or Howard was masterminding his family’s fall from the grave. Or maybe even Benoit did it. Instead (spoiler) the slimiest of all the characters ended up being the killer. It wasn’t that surprising.
I don’t know what to rate this. The first half is rough-going. Second half is good but not great. Had Johnson nailed the landing, maybe I give this a worth the read. But since the landing was on the clumsy side, I can’t recommend it.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I really like this trick I learned from Johnson of giving the audience the answer up front so that they stop asking the question. Since they’re not asking for the question anymore, you can totally surprise them later on with the answer.
