Film

Knives Out

Name: Knives Out
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Mystery
Released: 2019
Cast: Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon

A modern whodunit that treats the country-house mystery like a puzzle box built to be admired, not just solved. Rian Johnson stuffs it with red herrings, class commentary, and a note-perfect Daniel Craig as a Foghorn Leghorn Poirot, but keeps the plotting airtight underneath the jokes. Funny, twisty, and rewatchable — for anyone who wants Agatha Christie with a wink and real teeth.

TMDb rating

3.9

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love whodunits built like clockwork, where a wickedly sharp script gleefully tangles a rich family's lies and every suspect's alibi gets pulled apart in front of you.

Skip it if you want your mysteries grim or your detectives brooding; this one is playful, talky, and happy to let its own cleverness show, which can feel showy to some.

What it asks of you: Just over two hours of sitting still for dialogue-heavy interrogations and sly reveals, with a light, mischievous touch rather than tension that builds to dread.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Gosford Park2001

Robert Altman's country-house murder mystery is the blueprint Knives Out is riffing on — overlapping dialogue, class warfare between upstairs and downstairs, and a killer buried under decades of good manners.

But Slower and more novelistic than Knives Out; it trusts you to piece together thirty characters' worth of resentment without much hand-holding.

Murder on the Orient Express2017

Kenneth Branagh's lavish, star-stuffed Christie adaptation gives you the same pleasure of watching one impossibly composed detective work a locked-room full of liars, just with more moustache and more train.

But Plays it straighter and more reverent than Knives Out — gorgeous, but less interested in subverting the genre than celebrating it.

Clue1985

A gleeful, quotable farce built from a board game, with a mansion full of suspects, multiple endings, and comic timing so sharp it's become a cult classic in its own right.

But Broader and sillier than Knives Out's dry wit — this is slapstick first, mystery second.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Knives Out

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

And Then There Were None1945

This is the ancestor Knives Out is in conversation with — same closed circle of suspects, same slow reveal of everyone's secret, decades before irony got involved.

The original template: ten strangers stranded on an island, picked off one by one, in a crisp black-and-white adaptation of the Christie novel that basically invented this whole genre.

But No jokes, no winking at the camera — the tone is genuinely tense rather than playful, and the pacing is very much of its era.

The Nice Guys2016

Shane Black's buddy comedy has the same DNA — a genuinely tangled case wrapped in constant, character-driven banter, with Gosling and Crowe doing note-perfect comic chemistry.

But Trades the drawing-room elegance for 70s LA grime and a much higher body count.

A Simple Favor2018

A twist-a-minute thriller that never stops enjoying its own cleverness, with Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively turning a missing-persons case into pure, stylish fun.

But Tonally messier — it swerves harder into camp and melodrama than Knives Out ever does.

Only Murders in the Building2021

Three washed-up true-crime obsessives investigate a death in their own apartment building — funny, warm, and structured like a puzzle you can pause and actually try to solve.

But Episodic TV pacing means less of the single, satisfying mechanical click Knives Out delivers in one sitting.

Death on the Nile2022

More Branagh-Poirot glamour and misdirection, this time on a boat instead of a train — a solid, handsome, old-fashioned mystery if you want another dose of that world.

But Overstuffed cast and a slower middle act make it feel less tightly wound than Knives Out.

See How They Run2022

A meta whodunit set backstage at a West End Christie production, poking gentle fun at the genre's own clichés while still delivering an actual mystery.

But Lighter and slighter than Knives Out — charming rather than dazzling, and the twist is easier to see coming.

The Grand Budapest Hotel2014

Not a mystery exactly, but Wes Anderson's caper shares the same delight in ornate plotting, eccentric ensembles, and a story nested inside a story.

But Far more whimsical and stylised — if you came for the whodunit mechanics specifically, this is a different kind of pleasure.

Soupçons2004

Same structure — a wealthy family, an ambiguous death, a house full of people who all tell it differently — but played completely straight, with a real family's devastation instead of a script.

A documentary series following the real trial of a novelist accused of killing his wife at the bottom of a staircase — the same forensic fascination with competing stories, but with actual grief at stake.

But There's no puzzle-box satisfaction here, no tidy solution — it's slow, ambiguous, and genuinely upsetting in a way fiction rarely is.

Wild Things1998

Same engine — a story built entirely to be re-solved on a second viewing — but stripped of class commentary and dignity, and dialed all the way up to pulp.

A trashy, sun-drenched Florida thriller that keeps flipping who's conning who long after you think you've caught up — pure plot-twist adrenaline with none of the manners.

But Sleazy, campy, and morally weightless where Knives Out has real social bite — this is the genre with its clothes off.