The Story Archive

Knives Out

Rian Johnson · 2019 CE · Film · Modern / American · Contemporary

A best-selling crime novelist is found dead in the attic study of his Massachusetts house the morning after his eighty-fifth birthday party, and a private detective with an improbable Southern drawl arrives uninvited to interview a family who each had a reason to want the will read early. Johnson wrote it as an original and turns the country-house form on inherited American money and on the immigrant staff who keep the house standing. Its reception restored the studio whodunit as a commercial proposition and produced a sequel series.

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Attributes

Genre
MysteryComedySatire
Theme
Wealth & GreedClass & InequalityAppearance vs RealityGuilt & ConscienceJustice & Revenge
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
InnocentTricksterCaregiver
Plot structure
MysteryIronic Reversal
Symbol / motif
The HouseThe EstateThe Game / Cards
Conflict
vs Personvs Society
Mode / tone
IronicComicSatirical
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

Closest analogues