This one is a going to have spoilers - so you’ve been warned.
I love this movie so this will be written with bias. Knives Out is what happens when a bestselling mystery writer kills himself and leave everything to his kind nurse instead of the spoiled members of his family. I can’t do this film justice in a blog, so I won’t go into intense detail, but here’s the background. Christopher Plummer plays Harlan Thrombey, a self-made millionaire with his own publishing company and house of fabulous oddities based on his many novels. His family is made up of a whose who of great actors (including Jamie Lee Curtis, Toni Collette, Michael Shannon, and Chris Evans) in a traditional Agatha Christie style.
This comes with their own quirky private detective Blanc (Daniel Craig takes this role and runs with it in a fantastic way) working with the exhausted police investigators (one of whom is notably played by LaKeith Stanfield). At the center of all of this is Marta, the quiet, young caregiver played by Ana de Armas. Also, Frank Oz has a cameo as the lawyer at the will reading. Side note: I just imagine this moment on the set of Star Wars the Last Jedi where Rian Johnson fanboyed over Frank Oz and slyly asked if he wasted to play the snarky attorney. If this is not how the casting occurred, I don’t want to know. Let me have my geek dream.
This movie is Rian Johnson’s love letter to Poirot, Colombo, Jessica Fletcher, and the film Clue. So, he includes so many of the tropes needed, while mixing in it a unique story of socioeconomic status.
Let’s look at the author/victim of the mystery first. Harlan Thrombey fills his house with a mix of oddities and objects from his novels. He raised his family in this attempt to make his own life more interesting as his daughter talks about his love of games and how he regrets giving them all too many handouts that they don’t seem to appreciate. For example, when he finds out that his son-in-law is having an affair, instead of coming out directly with the information, he writes in a secret message to his daughter that he promises to deliver if the husband does not come clean.
Therefore, when Marta thinks she’s accidentally poisoned Harlan with morphine, he is determined to save her in a way that is full of all the complications of a mystery novel, after he considers how this form of murder would work well in a novel. He refuses to allow her to call the police as her mother is undocumented. Instead, he tells her to leave the house so everyone sees her, sneak back in, pretend to be Harlan so everyone thinks he was still alive after she left, and then sneak back out. All of this while he has slit his own throat to make his death appear as a suicide. This, by the way, is not the actual twist of the film. All of that is revealed in the first 30 minutes.
Going back to the idea of a successful mystery writer being the center of a murder mystery. I’ve mentioned the house and property full of wonderful eccentric relics. This is meant to mirror his personality and the themes of his novels. The reason why I point this out is because it is the beloved goal of every writer or artist to be able to afford a house big enough to fill with all of the weird items of our dream lives. Mine would have a secret bookcase door, a cast iron spiral staircase, and a giant mural of either a Gustav Dore’ picture or a N.Y. Wyeth illustration.
None of this has to do with the plot of the movie (well, it does, but you need to watch the movie to find out how). I’m just saying - I want Harlan Thrombey’s house.
