TIFF 2022: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

2019’s Knives Out was a major hit, earning Rian Johnson an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, so it was inevitable that a sequel would be made but the trajectory of this sequel was a different one. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is now a Netflix streaming release with a theatrical release to come. Despite its new circumstances and with Johnson once again back as writer and director, the sequel does not miss a beat, even performing the near-herculean task of matching or even exceeding the original film as it ditches a New England mansion for the beautiful Greek countryside. A major selling point of the original film was its great cast. This film, meanwhile, is no different. Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, and Kate Hudson just to name a few alongside Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc are also once again given an excellent script that is not only hilarious but offers plenty of twists and turns in creating a gripping mystery to underpin all the beautiful insanity.

Glass Onion takes place during the pandemic where famed detective Benoit Blanc (Craig) found himself in a funk where he just needed another case to revitalize him. He would soon find one after being invited to a weekend getaway on an lavish estate on a secluded island in Greece by a tech billionaire named Miles Bron (Norton) for a murder mystery party with his close friends and inner circle of disruptors. However, things unsurprisingly did not go according to plan. The film’s title was definitely not a mistake as there were certainly layers to be unpeeled with key to the story being the backstories of Bron and his inner circle as their friendship was put to the test as a dark truth threatened to bring them all down. Further twists and turns leave the characters and will leave audiences on edge as those layers kept getting peeled back as things were not always what they seemed. A lot of the fun from the original Knives Out is watching its over-the-top characters play off of one another in the face of a tense situation. This sequel delivers much of the same hilarious moments; however, the writing gives them more depth this time around and each plenty of time to shine.

The best part of Glass Onion was the stellar performances across the board. The snappy dialog comes faster and more furious here but the cast were all up to the task. Craig and his effortless charm and charisma once again propelled him as Blanc as the film required him to do more physically. While each of the supporting cast had their moments, Hudson hilariously stole scenes as a problematic former model named Birdie Jay and Monae arguably outshone everyone else as Bron’s former partner Cassandra Brand.

At the end of the day, Glass Onion is another winner that took an already winning formula and improved upon it in style.

 still courtesy of Netflix

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.