Benoit Blanc is back in his dapper suits and deliciously-made-up accent, cooking up some “Southern hokum” while solving murders in his latest adventure Glass Onion, which is a Knives Out mystery the full title reminds us of.

Daniel Craig’s Blanc took us all by surprise with 2019’s Knives Out. A film that made murder mystery fans send up a prayer to the murder mystery gods that be for breathing new life into the genre again. And the sequel, or should we say the second Benoit Blanc film since Blanc is the only repeating character from the first film, more than meets expectations, which were pretty high to begin with.

But while it retains most of what worked for the first film, Glass Onion changes not just its setting but also its tone. The gloomy and grey setting of Knives Out has been replaced with the sunny climes of a Greek island. The stately wealth has been traded for gaudy, new money riches. Subtlety has been passed over for over-the-top characterisation. And instead of being sprinkled with humour, it brings the comedic front and centre, even as it continues to take digs at the rich and famous.

Which goes to say that you are going to get all the twisty plot points and misdirections that you loved but none of it feels like you’ve seen it before, which makes it as fresh as the original. It’s bigger, more extravagant and zanier, and if it does stretch it with the name-dropping and cameos, which does get a bit tedious, then it is a flaw we can totally overlook.

At the heart of the murder mystery is a murder mystery, only that murder mystery is supposed to be a weekend game set up by the obnoxious Elon Musk-ish tech billionaire, Miles Bron (Edward Norton), for his “closest” friends and “fellow disruptors”, each of whom has a reason to hate Miles but also needs him to achieve their goals.

Once again, writer-director Rian Johnson brings in a stellar cast to tell his story and they all bring their A-game. These include politician Claire Debella (Kathryn Hahn) who is running for senate, Miles’s second-in-command, scientist Lionel ToussaInt (Leslie Odom Jr), streamer and men’s rights activist Duke Cody (Dave Bautista) who was accused of hawking “boner Rhino pills” to teenagers, and an oft-cancelled fashionista-turned-designer Birdie Jay (Kate Hudson) who has a penchant for tweeting racial slurs.

Also invited is Cassandra “Andi” Brand (Janelle Monae), Miles’s ex-partner who was taken to court, fleeced and kicked out of the company by him. And even more strangely, an invitation for the weekend also goes to our favourite detective Benoit Blanc, who is not known to anybody, not even it seems to Miles, who denies having sent him an invite. But why is Blanc, who seems to be uncomfortable around the wealthy, so gleeful about participating in a murder mystery game of the rich and somewhat famous?

A still from Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. Twitter

We get to peel some of the layers of the Blanc-shaped onion as well!Things start getting hairy when the bodies of those on the island start dropping. And it is an absolute joy to watch Blanc go about unpeeling the layers of the onion to discover the truth. We can’t say much more because even saying the names of who died is going to be a spoiler.

Hudson and Bautista revel in their over-the-top characters, having as much fun as Craig seems to have playing Blanc. And if Ana de Armas became the standout in Knives Out, it’s Monae’s turn as Brand that is bound to make an impression on the audience in Glass Onion.

We get to peel some of the layers of the Blanc-shaped onion as well, with more of a peek into the man himself. We know he is terrible at online mystery games, has a penchant for taking baths and spending an inordinate amount of time in the bathtub, is going crazy because of the pandemic-enforced isolation and he doesn’t live alone. We also find out that there is a line he won’t cross but help find a way around it, and that he can be sympathetic and caring.

Yet, it feels like we have only just begun the unravelling.

Glass Onion has whetted our appetite for more Benoit Blanc adventures and we can’t wait to see what Johnson and Craig have to offer next.