Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is the second movie in this loosely-connected series, written and directed by Rian Johnson. Although they share the character of Benoit Blanc, the world-famous detective, Glass Onion’s story is completely independent.
Glass Onion follows a group of colorful characters who are invited by their tech billionaire friend to a vacation on his private island. He hosts a murder mystery party where people start dying for real.
Good Parody Has to be Good First
Glass Onion is a parody of the classic murder mystery in many ways. It features tropes like a world-famous detective, a murder mystery party that turns to real murder, a secret twin, a shooting by a gloved hand from just off-screen, and a bullet stopped by an item in a breast pocket.
It also features silliness like a voice shouting “dong” across the island instead of a proper bell, an unexplained dudebro who intrudes in random scenes, Jeremy Renner’s homemade hot sauce, and a rich-guy exercise app that features famous sports figures “on the clock” in a constant live stream, waiting for the rich guy to exercise.
However, all of the tropes and silliness are layered into a well-executed mystery, with a cast of interesting and potentially murderous characters, whose motives and backgrounds come out in a series of reveals that each change our perception of the story.
The titular glass onion is the top room of the billionaire mansion, but also the structure of the story, called out within the dialogue as a metaphor for a mystery where all the layered complications are distractions, and the real answer was obvious all along.
In short, a really good parody must understand exactly what it is parodying. It has to be a good example of the conventional in order to call out the absurd aspects of a genre.
Genre is 50% Superficial
Many of the parts of Glass Onion that feel most like a classic mystery are simple visuals: the entrance and pose of the femme fatale when she first appears, or the sweep of the island’s lighthouse light through the mansion windows after the power goes out.
These things aren’t vital to the story, but they’re visually stunning and they do a tremendous amount of work to set the mood. This is an important lesson for genre writers, many of whom tend to favor plot or characterization over authorial voice and lyricism. It’s good to remember that stylized writing can pull the reader into the story just as effectively as brilliant world-building or dialogue. Ideally, we provide a healthy mix of both.
Bring the Audience Into the Story
The movie came out in 2022, with a brief theatrical release followed by Netflix. It is set in the height of the pandemic, and as it introduces the characters, it also smartly roots the world in its time and place.
We meet the politician taking TV news interviews from her living room, the scientist on a Zoom call at work, the self-centered fashionista hosting a huge unmasked house party, and the “manoshpere” influencer streaming from the house where he lives with his girlfriend and mom. The famous detective, Benoit Blanc, is in the tub, slowly losing his mind out of boredom and losing a game of Among Us with a bunch of celebrities. The bathroom is full of liquor bottles and piles of books.
The cast spends a bit of time solving their puzzle-box invitations to the murder mystery island vacation, revealing little tidbits of who they are before we jump to the luxury yacht trip from the Greek mainland to the island where the remainder of the movie will take place. The characters are given a mysterious concoction that is implied (but not outright stated) to protect them from Covid, and this is the last we see of the masks and social distancing.
What’s interesting about this first half of the first act is that it chooses to start in the midst of the pandemic, even though it has little bearing on the remainder of the movie. It could have done what many movies did, and simply ignored the plague times altogether. Instead, we start in a very relatable (maybe too relatable) time and place, and the movie brings us along into its fantastic world of ultra-wealth and murder.
Easing the audience gently into an unfamiliar world is common in fantasy and science fiction, where the world of the story is often very different from the world we live in. However, Johnson shows that it can be equally effective in a modern mystery story that takes place in a world very similar to ours.
A Mystery Worth Emulating
I really enjoyed Glass Onion. It’s the kind of movie that rewards re-watching, not just to notice all the clever clues hidden throughout, but to study the intricate layering of structural elements. Rian Johnson is frankly showing off. If you’re looking for a great study in constructing a mystery, this is a modern masterpiece of a classic genre.
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