I watched Knives Out about a week ago.
As others have said, it's a very well-shot, well-acted, and cleverly-plotted parody/homage to Agatha Christie whodunits. Johnson is a very talented director, and I hope he keeps making smaller films like these instead of big movies like TLJ (which I still haven't seen). This movie had a paltry $40 million dollar budget, and it looks fantastic, even better that the already good-looking, low-budget Rambo: Last Blood ($50 million). (It remains to be seen if Knives Out will prove profitable, but still... nice work.)
However... I went into the movie thinking of Johnson as a fucking loser, and my opinion on him hasn't changed. And the (otherwise very enjoyable) movie ultimately left a bad aftertaste in my mouth. Here's why. (This will contain the biggest plot spoilers imaginable, and I know I'm going to get puzzle pieces for this.)
A lot of the "controversial" plot elements in the film—the "alt-right troll" character, the talk about Trump (bless Johnson's little heart for trying so hard to seem evenhanded, by attempting to accurately articulate the right-leaning position against illegal immigration while pointing out the left's hysteria about muh Nazis... he failed, but he seems to have tried), the comments about SJWs, the protagonist being an illegal's anchor baby, etc.—all seem, once you're actually in the middle of the story, to be intentionally conspicuous MacGuffins. Within the narrative, these elements serve to ramp up the polarized nature of the Thrombey family and to distract from the central mystery (always an important thing to do in whodunits).
In the real world, a lot of the players in media and politics are trying to figure out how to harness the energy of clickbait/outrage culture for free advertising... and Johnson arguably succeeded at that in promoting Knives Out with his provocative pre-release comments.
(Aside: I think that very thing is also happening with Craig's next Bond box office bomb-in-the-making: carefully worded "leaks" that make it sound like Bond will be made a black woman which are then walked back as more of the plot comes out, relieving fans and creating instant, free advertising, discussion, and relevancy for an upcoming movie in a flagging franchise.)
But anyway, you go into Knives Out expecting TDS on steroids because Johnson is insufferable, then you find out things aren't THAT bad. Those elements exist to characterize the Thrombeys more than they exist to allow Johnson to thumb his nose at muh deplorables. Great, right?
... but I think if you step back and consider the themes and symbolism of Knives Out, all of those elements I mentioned at the top of the spoiler ultimately exist to achieve one symbolic moment in the film: what Chris Evans's character, Ransom, says when he thinks he's evaded defeat by our protagonist.
The basic gist of the speech is that Marta is an outsider to the family, someone who was accepted into and treated "just like a member of the family" (a phrase that's used so often throughout the film that you have to suspect it's a little disingenuous and patronizing). And yet she's so ungrateful that instead of doing "the right thing" and making sure the Thrombeys receive the legacy of their deserved birthright, she's going to "steal" it from them instead.
Consider a few points:
- Ransom is a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Aryan-looking dude with a lantern jaw. He's a repulsive, duplicitous character of smug, entitled privilege. (He's also played by an insufferable, self-hating SJW faggot.)
- Marta is a doe-eyed, absurdly virtuous non-white anchor baby maid, a character who has come from nothing and has almost nothing until the patriarch's will leaves everything to her.
- The Thrombey family, aside from their privileged lifestyles, are depicted as diverse enough to cover both extremes of the partisan American political spectrum.
- Illegal immigration is specifically mentioned several times, as a defining aspect of Marta's background and origin and as a point of discussion/debate. Marta is subtley disrespected and talked down to even by the Thrombeys who don't mean her ill will.
- Craig's character specifically ridicules Ransom's claim to his family's ownership of the manor, saying they obtained it from some non-white (presumably immigrant) family in the past.
- Marta is depicted in the final shot as the new mistress of the manor and the entire Thrombey fortune, literally looking down on the former owners and deciding if she'll have mercy on them or not.
If you haven't connected the dots, let me spell it out:
- The manor, its accompanying fortune, and the legacy of the Thrombey publishing company represent America, American fortunes, and everything Americans have accomplished.
- The Thrombeys represent current Americans. They are privileged, white, of all political stripes, and are represent in the final scene by the worst individual among them: a white male. His (and their) claims to the family legacy are all presented as spurious.
- The female child of a non-white illegal immigrant becomes the inheritor of all of it because she is humble and perfectly virtuous and therefore deserves it.
- Marta, who according to the plot most definitely has the most moral claim to what she's been given, has to decide if she's going to completely disinherit the Thrombeys of everything they used to own or to leave them entirely dispossessed.
This final series of scenes is a mortifying, patronizing, racist "noble savage" fantasy about perfect, virtuous non-whites taking over the country. Johnson is such a good "progressive" he's smugly thumbing his nose at white Americans (and that's all of them, not just Evil Trump Supporters, for the sin of white privilege) over the threat of demographic replacement... and he goes so far as depicting the progressive sadomasochistic fantasy of non-whites having all the social and financial power (thanks in part to illegal immigration, which only those lacking compassion would oppose!) so they can satisfyingly decide the fate of the previous holders of power: to either treat them "fairly" or completely disenfranchise them... both of which they will have the moral right to do.
This is straight up intersectional, crypto-Marxist, identity politics symbolism. It's placed there in Johnson's film so he can virtue signal to the people who "get it" and so he can, with plausible deniability, mock his enemies for his own amusement and their "overreaction" to his whodunit. You know, kind of like the obnoxious social media trolls he claims to hate because they're just so awful and mean-spirited!
Go on, hand me my "autistic" ratings. But all of that is in the movie, and there's no question this shit was placed there for a reason. Rewatch the film with all this in mind and you'll see it very clearly.
TL;DR: Johnson is a huge, hyper-leftist faggot. But even huge, hyper-leftist faggots can be talented entertainers (Hollywood would be bankrupt otherwise), and he made an enjoyable movie in spite of the cringeworthy extreme leftist symbolism he couldn't help but shove into it.
