Rian Johnson’s Knives Out franchise is a meta evolution of the murder mystery genre while also adhering to its classic structure. An impossible death/murder that almost breaks logic and rationality. A colourful set of characters and a shadow of doubt falls over all of them at some point in the story. A red herring here, a false end there, and then our charming detective drops a lofty monologue explaining all the machinations of the death/murder before zooming in on the perpetrator. Rian Johnson knows you know how all of this too well, and he also knows you still want the same while also somehow craving the rush of a puzzle being solved at the end. And that is where the director employs his extensive knowledge of the genre to create something outwardly simple, old-school, meta, whimsical, formulaic, while also packing it with enough winks, nods, subversions, so you know there’s more than meets the eye. Wake Up Dead Man is the most complex and thematically rich entry in the franchise yet.
Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner
Comments are closed.