I continue my analysis of Rian Johnson’s brilliant film. If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, I recommend starting there — you can find it here. Let me remind you that the main criticism I’ve heard from people around me is that the film supposedly lacks depth. That’s exactly the claim I aim to refute in this part of the analysis.

But first, I’ll begin with something simpler — the clues and details planted throughout the film.

Warning: spoilers ahead!

The reference to Clue is not the only clue Johnson leaves in the film. Several others point to the identity of the killer. Let’s recall the German shepherds — the same kind from the film Clue. They’re friendly to everyone in the house, even strangers like Blanc and the police officers. But there’s one family member they don’t warm up to — Ransom, who was supposedly not present in the house at the time of Harlan’s death. However, his alibi is thrown into question after Meg (Katherine Langford) mentions that the dogs were barking around 3 a.m. on the night the writer died.

Johnson also plants a visual clue. When Harlan talks about Ransom in the attic, a knife briefly appears between the camera and the writer. The shot is composed in such a way that the blade seems to cut across Harlan’s throat — foreshadowing that Ransom will ultimately be the cause of his death.

But the very first clue comes right after the scene where Harlan’s body is discovered. Marta, her mother, and sister are having breakfast in the kitchen. Marta’s sister is watching a movie on her laptop. From the film, we hear a man’s voice — the character is being accused of murder by a detective (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt). The accused replies: “You can’t prove it.” These are clearly the words of a guilty man. Johnson is subtly suggesting that the killer is male.

The next line from the detective — “We’ve got nanny-cam footage” — hints at Marta’s involvement in the case and her central role in uncovering the truth. And the crime itself, by the way, is encrypted in the titles of Harlan’s books, shown in the very first scenes of the film.

Pay close attention — most of the suspects in the film are using iPhones. Except for Ransom and Marta, who have Android devices. And here’s the key: under Apple’s product placement policy, the company’s devices provided for film productions cannot be shown in the hands of villains — such as murderers, psychopaths, or terrorists.

This means Richard, Walt (he’s wearing an Apple Watch), Joni, Linda, Meg, and Jacob are automatically ruled out as suspects in Harlan’s death. Unlike Ransom and Marta. But by the second act, Marta is cleared of guilt — which leaves only Ransom.

Remember this little trick the next time you’re watching a murder mystery or a thriller. You’re welcome.

Automatons are human-like dolls designed to perform specific, repetitive actions. A kind of robot — but one that appeared long before the word “robot” was introduced by Czech writer Karel Čapek in the 20th century. We see a collection of these robot-like dolls at the very beginning of the film, when the interior of the Thrombey mansion is first shown. And there's a reason for that.

First, it's a reference to the 1972 detective film Sleuth (written by Anthony Shaffer, who also penned the early screen adaptations of Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile), starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine. That story is about a successful mystery writer who lives in a house full of puzzles and — yes — automatons. Sound familiar?

Second, the automatons symbolize Harlan’s relatives, who — after losing the financial support of the family patriarch (their “program”) — are unable to return to normal life. All of them achieved success only thanks to Harlan’s talent and hard work, and now they’re left to fend for themselves.

But they’ll never admit it — which is why they lie constantly: to themselves (Linda insists she achieved everything on her own) and to others (Walt, Richard, and Joni all lie during their interviews with the detective).

Marta, in contrast, is their complete opposite. She is physically incapable of lying (a trait that’s pushed to the extreme for dramatic effect), and she must rely on herself in everyday life, while also caring for her mother. Unlike the Thrombeys, Marta possesses genuine empathy — making her the only real person in the house, the only one with real emotions.

Empathy — or sensitivity — is the very quality Marta’s mother asks her younger daughter to show toward her older sister, when scolding her for watching a murder show. This kind of upbringing stands in stark contrast to the values of the Thrombey family, who hide their disdain — and even hatred — for anyone they see as beneath them.

Immigrants fit squarely into that category. Richard, for example, tells everyone he respects Marta because “her family did everything right and legally,” yet he can’t even remember where she’s actually from — despite claiming she’s like “part of the family.” And he’s far from the only one.

There are many small details that reveal how the Thrombeys truly feel about Harlan’s nurse. Take Walt’s phone call with Marta, for example: she greets him by name, but Walt seemingly ignores her and immediately introduces himself, as if he doesn’t even recognize her voice.

Or Linda’s lie that she was the only family member who voted for Marta to be allowed at the funeral — even though later, Walt claims exactly the same thing about himself. And then there’s Richard again: he clearly sees Marta as a maid — in one scene, he casually hands her his empty plate without even looking at her.

Pay attention also to how certain scenes differ depending on who’s recalling them — a member of the Thrombey family or Marta. For instance, in Richard’s memory of asking Marta about her background, everyone, including Marta, is smiling brightly. But in Marta’s version, she appears confused and even frightened.

Hypocrisy is a defining trait for nearly all the Thrombeys (Meg being the possible exception). And when the will is read — stripping them of their status as parasites feeding off Harlan’s talent — all masks come off, and we see their true faces.

It all explains Harlan’s decision: he loved his children and grandchildren enough to deny them the one thing that was slowly destroying their humanity.

The board game that Harlan and Marta play is Go — an ancient Chinese strategy game that dates back over 2,000 years. Its core objective is to capture the opponent’s territory.

Notice that Harlan plays with white stones, while Marta plays with black. Harlan is a wealthy writer, living in a mansion like an aristocrat. Marta is a nurse — an immigrant from a third-world country. Given the nature of the game, certain historical parallels are hard to ignore.

But in the modern world, it’s capitalism that dominates — a system that encourages strategic thinking: people build careers and pursue goals, companies chase metrics and fight for market share. And in that kind of race, it’s easy to lose one’s humanity.

Yet despite all his intellect, Harlan ultimately loses to Marta. Her secret? She isn’t playing to win — to conquer territory — but simply to create a beautiful pattern. She’s playing outside the rules of the game.

It’s Marta’s kindness and empathy that earn her Harlan’s inheritance — and all the “white” racists end up leaving what has now become her home.

By the 1960s, Agatha Christie had disowned her most famous character — the detective Hercule Poirot. She called him “an egocentric creep,” since to Poirot, almost no one was ever good enough to assist him in an investigation. In that sense, Benoit Blanc is the complete opposite of Poirot.

He identifies the person connected to Harlan’s death on the very first day, but chooses not to show it — believing that doing so wouldn’t be the right thing. Instead, Blanc decides to wait and let the events unfold naturally and lead him to the truth — what he refers to as the “trajectory of a projectile.” To do this, he enlists Marta as his assistant.

It’s Marta who throws Harlan’s baseball to the dog, and the dog who brings Blanc the key piece of evidence — the broken piece of trellis. Blanc’s principle worked flawlessly.

In this way, Rian Johnson pays tribute to his favorite writer — while also breaking with the modern trend of portraying genius detectives as “egocentric creeps” (Sherlock, House M.D.).

Hitchcock famously hated whodunnits. He saw them as one long setup for one big surprise at the end — which, to the great director, felt like a cheap storytelling trick. Instead, Hitchcock believed the audience should be given all the necessary information upfront — and then be held in suspense so gripping that they couldn’t look away from the screen.

Rian Johnson shares that philosophy fundamentally — yet at the same time, he loves the whodunnit genre. His idea was to place a Hitchcockian thriller at the center of a donut — scratch that — at the center of a whodunnit (which, by the way, conveniently rhymes with “donut”). At the center of this thriller is the character played by Ana de Armas — think back to the “Walter White choice.” In the story, it’s she who fills the “donut hole” Blanc spoke of.

In doing so, Johnson pays tribute both to Agatha Christie’s detective fiction and to Hitchcock’s cinematic suspense — to both literature and film. And the movie itself avoids the biggest flaw of traditional whodunnits: they usually aren’t fun to rewatch, because once you know the ending — the whole mystery falls apart.

But as you’ve hopefully seen by now, Knives Out is packed with details and subtext. So much so, that it’s impossible to catch everything on a single viewing.

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