Knives Out: A clever, genre-bending film with an ingeniously plotted narrative and a masterful screenplay where every line comes full circle.

A socio-politically self-aware film of sorts, it's political critique through observational comedy is truly something, that it got me laughing a lot throughout its runtime. It elicits laughs from its audience and conveniently hits it back at them.

it's a generalized term in film analysis to call a murder mystery/ crime investigation a whodunnit. However, the genre has its own hidden sub-tropes, namely whydunnits and howdunnits.

Now, from my multiple rewatches of the film, I've decided to classify it as a howdunnit. Why? Well, the film has a masterful genre-shift in the transition of the first to second acts, as it reveals it's who, and now focusses more on the "how" they're going to find the who instead

As I mentioned already, it's absurdly comical and explicitly observational. In the transition montage where the genre shift-occurs, there's some really clever writing.

During the montage where the genre-shift occurs, Marta (the lead), on the move to leave no suspicion of her involvement in the murder(albeit being the sole person involved) following her employer's plan, is puzzled between before and after and the narration says "beafterfore",

implying how nervous she truly is. It's tiny details like these that add a lot of value to its ingenious screenplay

KO is a near-perfect film, albeit some pacing issues along its second act, and a particular actor being borderline miscast, there aren't any unanswered questions and almost everything has a worthy payoff.

There's a lot of clever homophonic wordplay, such as 'Hugh' and 'You' which create clever twists in the film, and act as wonderful surprise elements..

Rian Johnson, one of my favorite writers working in the industry, is masterful at subverting expectations at the right time. You keep awaiting a glitch as all seems to obvious at first, and then you give up and focus on the howdunnit, and he subverts them explicitly much later

but its masterfully imperceptible

the film's socio-political critique is scathing. Almost every character has a realistic archetype towards society, all so well written that it's quite comical to realize how accurate it is.

Between the failed entrepreneur, the internet-obsessed teenager, the activistic uni-student, altruistic couples, the (only) self-made person in the family, an extra-marital affair, detached second generational cousins, each character is intrinsically analogous to real families

It hit me personally as most of it was scathingly similar to the actual extended family that I have.

Its take on American politics( you know who and what I'm talking about), immigration, class divide, and so much more is incredibly well done. You get broad and multiples perspective of the aforementioned among various hierarchies and sections in society.

the "a donut hole in a donut's hole" monologue is by far my favorite part of the film, in all three rewatches. It is actually an analogy to the film's plot, as all seems like it's been solved, and the hole appears closed to the audience, but it still seems in need of a crucial

piece to fill its plothole in the apparently filled hole, which in the case, is Fran's subpolt and the toxicology report

Benoit Blanc deciphering the chaos is simply a brilliant act from Craig. I think it's intentional he has a slobbish southern-accent, and the camaraderie between him and De Armas is so sympathetic. I can wait for this duo to reunite in No Time To Die.

I think the name Ransom was clever nomenclature. He's kind of like an evil and malicious savior to Marta, which is actually his name, but to the help he's Hugh, meaning he doesn't have to be their ransom, which he isn't in Fran's case.

Another small detail that has a wild pay-off. Harlan Thrombey jokes on how much Ransom is actually like him, yet Marta beats him more at their family game of GO, the film even has a dialogue where Ransom says "I don't know why he said that"

Harlan is an ingenious whodunnit novelist, and Ransom seems to be in the vein of Harlan too, as his to cover up for actually being guilty of killing his grandfather is genius, just like him, yet Marta, actually outsmarts him at the end. This is why Harlan says so, and it pays off

The family actually act like they care for Marta, but they actually don't, and it's quite obvious. Each character refers to her from a different nationality(Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazilian?!?), all of them say they were outvoted, meaning no one actually voted

All of them referring to her from different nationalities of Latin America was absurdly comical, cause In reality, most of the world is indifferent to the various cultures in Latin America and we've collectivised them

Blanc says all three of them can lie, but he actually interrogated four people- Linda, Richard, Joni, and Walt. Linda is shown to be the only child with an honest relationship with Harlan, and Blanc realizes she's honest

Linda was the only one who understood Harlan, and like her father, she is a self-made woman, and they played their games together. When Richard tries to hide the letter that exposes his affair, its shown to be blank, yet in the last scene, she heats it, revealing the letter

Now we don't know what's in the letter, but it's kind of understood that Harlan explains why he did this to her in a way she understands, and is shown to be the only unbothered one in the family at the end, as she has her own earnings to help herself

In conclusion, knives out is a brilliant howdunnit with the best screenplay of the year and is proof you should stan king @rianjohnson