Movie Review: Glass Onion
Review by: Josie Lorenz
Directed by: Rian Johnson
Rating: 4.5/5
Knives Out (2019) felt like an impossible act to chase yet Glass Onion has followed with incredible finesse.
Glass Onion, named after The Beatles song by the same title, follows detective Beniot Blanc, played by Daniel Craig, in yet another murder mystery. A glass onion is an idea that people will overthink a situation as they peel back the layers when the answer was in plain sight the entire time. They just needed to step back and repostiton. The film portrays this idea beautifully.
Glass Onion does not lie to you. While viewers are led to believe other answers to the mystery, I admire how the film gives us the tools to figure out the mystery ourselves. Oftentimes, films with twists that we, in theory, could have seen all along, use cinematography to hide the answers. But Glass Onion lays all the haints out in a way that if we only repositioned, we could see right to the center of the glass onion. The shots use the visual motif of hiding a subject with another subject, only to peel back and reveal it, though it was there all along. The movie layers onto itself in a way that makes the viewer feel a bit silly for not seeing it sooner. Sometimes, that’s the best feeling to have when watching a film.
While Knives Out is from the supposed perpetrator’s perspective, giving us a clear-cut answer, Glass Onion is through the perspective of Blanc. As a detective, his job is to solve the mystery and with him as a focal point, we figure it out alongside him, a refreshing change of pace while still keeping our attention. The way director Rian Johnson was able to tie in modern pop culture like Ricky J, Kanye West, Batman and Among Us in such a casual way, was very enjoyable and caught the attention of Gen Z viewers.
While the pacing of the film can seem questionable at times, Glass Onion leaves the audience with a satisfying theme that could be seen right at the title screen. It is going to be hard to wait to see what Johnson has in store for us in Knives Out III.