Panida to show Knives Out as $5 film

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

Few recent film characters have achieved such instant icon status as Benoit Blanc, the suave southern sleuth invented by writer-director Rian Johnson for his 2019 surprise hit Knives Out.

Played with gleefully subversive charm by Daniel Craig, Blanc is the centerpiece of the Agatha Christie-inspired whodunit, which also features an 11-member ensemble cast including some of Hollywood’s most famous faces.

The plot is firmly within the Christie vein, featuring the gathering of a deeply dysfunctional family at the estate of its wealthy patriarch to celebrate his 85th birthday. Played by Christopher Plummer, Harlan Thrombey is a rich and famous mystery novelist whose relationship with his relatives is, to say the least, “difficult.”

As the family fills up the Massachusetts manse, their vices, ambitions, grievances and divisions are revealed. Things are tense from the get-go and — wouldn’t you know it — the next morning finds Thrombey with his throat cut. While the local authorities think it’s a suicide, Blanc enters the scene as an anonymously hired private investigator to suss out the truth as only he can.

What follows is a mashup of Clue and Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, in which each of the quirky characters are interrogated with Blanc’s inimitable style on full display. 

With devilish details and a cast that includes the likes of Jamie Lee Curtis, Chris Evans, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson and Toni Collette, among others, it’s no wonder that the popularity of Knives Out has since spawned a sequel, Glass Onion (2022), and will see a third installment, Wake up Dead Man, in 2025.

The Panida Theater will put Knives Out on the big screen Saturday, Jan. 4 as the latest in its $5 movie series, with showings at 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. Doors open 30 minutes before the show. Get tickets at panida.org or at the box office at 300 N. First Ave.