There is no way to praise Rian Johnson’s Knives Out for its most profound achievements without completely giving away the secrets of its most mysterious pleasures. The film wants to be at least two or three things at once, and it achieves its ambitions. This takedown of classic Agatha Christie whodunits consistently takes its cake and fully gobbles it down, leaping between foul-tempered parody and serious, earnest interrogation with such agility that its broad comedy ends up seeming almost realistic and its message-drenched morality goes down like a delicious dessert. 

The setup is classic: Acclaimed mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) is dead, the victim of an apparent suicide, and his family of complicated characters has questions. Gathering at their patriarch’s mansion for fights and accusations, Thrombey’s brood is met with questions from a pair of police investigators, who are also accompanied by a mysterious companion, the molasses-voiced Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), a Hercule Poirot knock-off whose eccentricities further exacerbate the investigation. 

As questions compile and possibilities expand, the simple suicide explanation grows less and less believable, and everyone becomes a suspect. It could be straight-laced conservative daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis), her husband Richard (Don Johnson), failed creative son Walt (Michael Shannon), or widowed, mantra-spouting lifestyle guru daughter-in-law Joni (Toni Collette). Or it could be slippery ne’er-do-well grandson Ransom (Chris Evans), whose animosity for everyone in the family fills the air even in his absence. 

The athletic abilities of Johnson and his cast are on full display throughout, but even as it remains fun to guess just who might be at fault here, the true gift of the film is not so much as pure plot-driven entertainment, but as a witty romp wrapped around a timely, sharp-pointed message. Observing the hurricane-like proceedings is Thrombey’s visiting nurse Marta (Ana de Armas), a classically beautiful, often silent young immigrant with a major problem: When she tries to lie, she vomits. Literally. Besides this being a humorous character trait for an outsider at the center of a family breakdown, it becomes a metaphor for the inconvenient truth waiting to erupt from the core of a badly-behaved, white-supremacy-laden country. And this blend of ridiculousness and significance rockets Knives Out into territory that might at first seem out of its league, but eventually proves to be the film’s main enduring point. 

In the end, the killer is finally revealed, but by that time, the mystery that needs solving has shifted into an entirely different category, leaving all involved, and the audience, looking at a changing landscape, new rules, and a future that is coming, no matter who remains unready for it. Knives Out nudges all holdouts to get on board with these unexpected plot twists and to figure it out from there.