The writer-director chats with EW about his crackling original screenplay, which is building in awards buzz.
Read on below.Knives Outhits theaters Wednesday.
Just the very basic idea for it.
Claire Folger/Lionsgate
So what did that initial seed look like to you?
Why did the genre interest you?Well I had wanted to do a whodunit forever.
I grew up reading Agatha Christies books; its a genre that I deeply, deeply love.
Claire Folger/Lionsgate
Its been a comfort food for me.
I always wanted to do a straight-up whodunit.
A movie has to be a rollercoaster ride.
Celeste Sloman
You weave between these two conventions and, in many ways, honor them.
I did a little bit of specific studying, structurally.
So how important was it to you that people not figure it out?
Ive talked to people who in a good way!
I hoped the movie was as entertaining whether you guessed it or not.
Thats my ultimate hope.
The game its playing, hopefully, there is some element of surprise at the end.
But the bigger goal, for me, was to build it so as a dramatic ending it works.
Its the dramatic payoff to this protagonist weve been following and her relationship to this family.
[Laughs] Or just because of luck.
You pick the right person, there you go.
Making sure they still feel satisfied with the end of the film is part of my job.
I wanted to ask you about conceiving a few of the characters, starting with Detective Blanc.
Daniel Craig gives such a weird, wonderful performance.
He likes the sound of his own voice.
I tried to write him fairly straightforward.
I figured whoever I would find, I would collaborate with to find the eccentricities.
Daniel had grown up watching those movies as well, so he knew what I was talking about.
You also have Chris Evans playing a jerk and Toni Collette doing her Goop thing.
[Laughs]
Some of these feel very against-pop in in a very fresh way.
I had that in mind.
Daniel and Chris are probably the two who audiences would probably consider playing against-key in the most.
In this case, its a family; but its always something.
In Gosford Park, it was the whole upstairs-downstairs of an English monarchy.
Because of that, whodunits have always done that.
One thing they havent really been used for, though, is doing that in modern-day America.
We usually see them as period pieces set in Britain.
Were all very familiar with that.
So that seems exciting to me using the strength of the genre and applying them to the modern world.
Did you find as you got deeper into the script, these ideas started crystallizing?
I had that for a long, long time.
Earlier youd mentioned the thriller segment of the film as being its own kind of red herring.
In the case of a whodunit, theyre leaning into everything.
Theyre looking for red herrings everywhere.
You dont need to plant red herrings!
You dont need to plant false pathways and clues.
I found you could just play it very, very straight.
In many ways when youre on set, it feels like you cant be precious about the words.
You just have to take the hill.
[Laughs] At the same time, when Im writing, I am directing in my head.
That may very much change when we get on set.
Its a very messy relationship, made messier by the fact that its the same person doing both parts.
Very good question that I obviously did not have an articulate answer to.
No, its so interesting to me!
Trying to keep the thing thats precious be the intent of the scene.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
