A private detective is pulled out of his pandemic depression when a puzzle box arrives at his door with an invitation to attend a murder mystery party. Once he gets to the private island of a visionary billionaire, who’s also invited several famous celebrity guests, the detective realizes that the murder mystery game has set the stage for an actual murder to occur. A film by Rian Johnson, starring Daniel Craig, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Jessica Henwick, Madelyn Cline, Kate Hudson, and Dave Bautista.
Glass Onion
a Knives Out mystery
Rian Johnson
(2022)
Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn), the Governor of Connecticut; Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson), a former top model turned fashion designer; Duke Cody (Dave Bautista), a famous gaming streamer; Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odom), a scientist at Alpha; Andi Brand (Janelle Monáe), a former co-founder of Alpha; and Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) all receive puzzle boxes from Miles Bron (Edward Norton), the owner of Alpha, the world’s most powerful tech company.
After they successfully open the puzzle boxes and solve the mechanisms inside, they find invitations to Miles Bron’s private island to play a murder mystery game where he himself is the victim.
But when Benoit Blanc arrives at the island, he learns the truth that Miles never sent him a puzzle box, and only five boxes were ever made. He suspects that someone among the group of invited friends reset a box and sent it to him because they wanted Benoit Blanc on the island for some specific purpose.
If you overlook the numerous plot holes or overly obvious clues, such as Miles’s reaction when he seems surprised to see a certain someone, or the fact that checking everyone’s invitations should have immediately revealed who gave their invitation to Benoit Blanc (at this point, he’s played so over the top that he comes across more like a clown than a detective), it’s still an entertaining mystery film that you can enjoy without thinking too hard.
Janelle Monáe’s performance is excellent as always. Her character is the only one with any real depth and complexity, unlike all the other characters in the film who are merely supporting players thrown in as red herrings to confuse the audience.
What I actually enjoyed were the surprise cameos from actors I didn’t expect to see, like Ethan Hawke showing up to spray disinfectant, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who was just a voice in Knives Out and remains just a voice in this one too, but this time as the hourly time announcement. That was genuinely hilarious.
Written and directed by American filmmaker Rian Johnson, Glass Onion is a murder mystery film that isn’t exactly a sequel to Knives Out, but rather a new case for Benoit Blanc. It’s a rather disappointing follow-up, on par with SEE HOW THEY RUN. Even though the director scaled things up with many elements that defy physics, added more plot twists, and made it longer than the previous film, it still fails to make a stronger impression than its predecessor.
Glass Onion premiered at Toronto International Film Festival on 10 September 2022. The film received one-week limited theatrical release in the United States on 23 November. Netflix began streaming it on December 23.
