In characteristic Rian Johnson fashion, and much like Knives Out before it, Glass Onion puts in a lot of work building up all the elements of the setting and players in order to craft its mystery.

Then as we reach the climax (again in typical Johnson style) all of that hard work is thrown away for a finale that is somehow both absurdly telegraphed and also completely out of place.

Seemingly self aware of this fact, in the grand conclusion detective Benoit Blanc compares the mystery to the titular glass onion. An object that masquerades as complex and layered but is, in reality, transparent, hollow and essentially a waste of time.

Unfortunately, just as a carpenter making a one-legged chair can't just engrave the words "this chair falls over" and call it a day, Glass Onion calling out its own shortcomings doesn't fix them. In fact, the opposite is true.

Maybe it comes down to personal taste in the end but I've always walked away from Johnson's films with a hollow feeling. The feeling that any depth was just an illusion, and one all but dropped before the credits rolled.