Earlier this year I went to my local theater to see See How They Run, a cutesy Agatha Christie homage that’s literally built around a murder that happens following a staging of The Mousetrap, her signature play. The movie was fine for what it was, but behind me, there was a teenager who kept trying to guess the twists aloud with his friends. Outside of this being an annoying thing to experience in a crowded theater, this kid’s interruptions made me realize something: I am not a murder-mystery guy. Or, at least, mystery alone is not something that entertains me. I’m all for being clever, all for shocking twists – but when a movie relies too heavily on those plot elements, it tells me that the writer has no actual point to make, no emotions to explore, no jokes to tell. Instead, these stories become monuments to the dark art of plotting, and in that sense self-congratulatory exercises for both the writer and the audience. The point is not to feel or say something, but to prove that you can stay one step ahead of the audience, or step by step with the script.

That, to me, is the core problem with Glass Onion, Rian Johnson’s sequel to his 2019 film Knives Out, the film that arguably kickstarted the murder-mystery revival and allowed movies like See How They Run to be made. Glass Onion is a well-made, perfectly watchable movie that executes the twisty-turny script – but that’s all it really does. Like Knives Out, it occasionally threatens to be insightful or funny, but all it boils down to is an invitation to sit back and marvel at Rian Johnson’s plotting ability. It’s clever in the way that a marble run or a Rube Goldberg machine is clever, but it has about the same depth and texture as those intricate contraptions as well. 

Glass Onion begins in May 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 lockdown in the United States. Tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton), founder of an undescribed company called Alpha, invites five of his closest friends to his private island off the coast of Greece for an elaborate murder-mystery party that gets complicated when one of the guests (for the sake of spoilers, I won’t reveal who) drops dead after a botched attempt by someone who was actually trying to kill Miles. Luckily for Bron, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig, whose Southern accent has deteriorated since Knives Out), the world famous detective, also got an invitation to the party, even though the two have never met. Unluckily for both of them, each of Bron’s houseguests – Alpha head scientist Lionel Toussaint (Leslie Odom Jr.), Connecticut Governor Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn), model/fashion designer Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson), men’s rights Twitch streamer Duke Cody (Dave Bautista), and Bron’s former business partner (who he forced out of Alpha) Andi Brand (Janelle Monáe) all have a motive for wanting him dead. Birdie’s flustered assistant Peg (Jessica Henwick) and Duke’s bombshell girlfriend Whiskey (Madelyn Cline) are also present to muddle things, as well. 

Like Knives Out, Glass Onion uses these wealthy, privileged people to try and say something about the current state of America. But no matter how clumsily Knives Out made those points, they at least felt current – Glass Onion, on the other hand, feels trapped in amber, all too eager to relitigate the same arguments from two years ago that most of us have moved past. Didn’t get enough jokes about pods and Zoom and masks in 2020? Well neither did Rian Johnson, apparently. It’d be one thing if Johnson had anything new to say about this period of time, but I’m not convinced that he even has old things to say about it – by the time we get to Bron’s island (where the titular Glass Onion, a compound named after the bar Bron and his buddies used to hang out at, is found), the pandemic is hardly mentioned. Instead, we get half-funny gags about how vapid and out of touch these very wealthy people are. But rather than say anything new about these kinds of people, the script turns into a shallow game of recognition. Thanks to social media, we’re constantly exposed to airheads like Birdie and galaxy-brained morons like Duke, and are expected to giggle when Johnson transposes these Internet archetypes to the screen. But portrayal is all he seems capable of – none of these characters have an inner life or a point of view. Their lines feel like they were written by a ChatGPT prompt for “Twitch streamer” and “wine mom.” But Johnson expects you to applaud him just for recognizing that these people exist at all.

The problem, really, is that Rian Johnson has very boring political ideas. This is the definitive “resist lib” movie – we’re supposed to think these people are dumb because they don’t wear the right masks, because they use archaic and offensive language, because they buy into Bron’s success bro mindset. And here’s the thing: my guess is that Johnson and I would probably agree on 90% of political issues. But the methods through which he conveys his worldview are smug and edgeless, the cinematic equivalent of “Make Donald Drumpf Again.” Even the final scene, which is built around violent catharsis, and feels like it’s meant to show some kind of solidarity with the 2020 protests and riots, feels more cringeworthy than cheerworthy. Because these characters already feel like parodies of themselves, Johnson’s politics begin to feel parodic as well – but you get the sense that he really feels like he’s onto something, which only makes his paper thin social commentary all the more grating. 

Knives Out had a similar problem, but it was also smart enough to turn its targets into actual characters. The Thrombley family from the first film are a sufficient portrayal of an overprivileged WASP clan that’s willing to throw anyone under the bus to preserve their inheritance – even Joni (Toni Collette) and Meg (Katharine Langford), the two liberal members of the family, turn on kindly immigrant nurse Marta (Ana de Armas) when she’s named the beneficiary of deceased patriarch Walt’s (Christopher Plummer) will. But in Glass Onion, there are no heel turns or betrayals because the potential suspects are already portrayed as craven. We, the public, have no illusions about their benevolence, and so Johnson tries to play them off as jokes. Unfortunately, when you’re stuck in 2013 and think a character yelling “shitballs” is the height of comedy, only some of those jokes are going to land.

As with its namesake, it’s impossible to peel away the layers of Glass Onion. This is partly because there are no layers, and partly because those that do seem to exist are transparent to the point of meaninglessness. With one glaring exception, you know exactly who each of these characters are from the jump, so all we’re left with is a well crafted plot acted out by cardboard cutouts. Judging by the reaction from critics and audience, that seems like it’s enough for some people. But I do wonder how many times Rian Johnson will be able to repeat this before they realize that, like vapid characters at the center of these movies, his stories aren’t quite as smart as they think they are.