Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery Review – Johnson Delivers Fun, Wild Sequel

Combined with a fabulous ensemble cast, this whodunit follow-up to Knives Out (which takes a dig at the beloved Clue game) is deeply enjoyable. Making a sequel is hard. If the first film is good, there’s the expectation that the follow-up must be just as good, if not better, than the original. Knives Out was the crowd-pleasing whodunit mystery hit of 2019 and there was some worry that director Rian Johnson’s sequel, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story, wouldn’t live up to it. However, Johnson has still got the magic. Glass Onion is wildly entertaining, endlessly charismatic, and somewhat ridiculous. Combined with a fabulous ensemble cast, this whodunit follow-up to Knives Out (which takes a dig at the beloved Clue game) is deeply enjoyable.

Miles Bron (Edward Norton), a tech billionaire with lots of ideas, invites his friends to his private Greek island for a weekend of fun and a murder mystery he put together. His friends are an eclectic bunch, to say the least. Birdie (Kate Hudson) is a model who always says the wrong things on social media, leading her assistant Peg (Jessica Henwick) to take away her phone lest there be any more damning evidence, Claire (Kathryn Hahn) is politician whose campaign is being funded by Miles, Lionel (Leslie Odom Jr.) is a tech whiz who is often tasked with working on Miles’ wild ideas that he faxes to him in the middle of the night, Duke (Dave Bautista) is a men’s rights Twitch streamer who is dating Whiskey (Madelyn Cline), who is trying to make it in the influencer business by appearing in Duke’s videos. Then there’s Cassandra Brand (Janelle Monáe), who co-founded the company Alpha with Miles, but who was eventually cut out of the equation and the friends group. Where does Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) fit into all this? Well, he also gets an invitation to Miles’ island, though the reason why is a mystery itself.