TIFF: Eating the Rich with "Knives Out"

by Chris Feil

When Rian Johnson announced a star-studded murder mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie, you didn’t think it would just be a straightforward genre exercise, did you? As he has shown in films such as Looper (and to an extent Star Wars: The Last Jedi in its brilliant eschewing of franchise dogma), Johnson delights in subverting our expectations of genre ever so slightly. Knives Out film is no exception, not only turning the ensemble comedy into a rollicking eat-the-rich satire, but also taking the standard whodunit plotting and repositioning it with exciting reinvention. Even if your tastes consider the book mold stodginess of Christie to remain delicious, Johnson’s modern narrative take should satisfy even purists.

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