Claire Kunzier, Editor 

Header Image: Lionsgate

The verb “hoodwinked” is defined as “deceived or tricked” by Dictionary.com. 

In 2006, the film “Hoodwinked!” was released to theaters by the Weinstein *gag* Company *vomit*. With high school animation skills and a rather star studded cast, this childhood fever dream movie is rather good. The plot being that someone is stealing the recipes of the forest and being paranoid Little Red Riding Hood (Anne Hathaway) takes her, Betty-Crocker-wannabe, grandmother’s recipe book for safekeeping. A series of curious events happen involving a wolf (Patrick Warburton), a lumberjack (Jim Belushi), Granny (Glenn Close) and Red, leading to a private detective investigation. The film begins with the event being investigated a wolf, a lumberjack, Granny and Red are at the center of the investigation. Red is a main suspect for who stole the recipes, but ultimately is the most unaware character of the truth, def is a therapy topic for her. 

The story is told through flashbacks during the characters interviews and during the villain reveal with a high action ending. wOw. That was a lot, but long of the short, a sadistic bunny was stealing the recipes and was causing all the sets of events to happen, but they stopped him and lived happily ever after. The main points I want you to remember are: detective that speaks in riddles, set in present, but has a lot of flashback scenes during suspect interviews, stories are basically the same with slightly different parts of the story piecing it all together, big character development bomb and “surprise” villian. 

The phrase “the knives are out (for someone)” is to readily push the blame onto someone else in an unfair way in a paraphrasing from Google. 

In the 2019 film “Knives Out,” the title derives from “the knives are out (for someone),” and it was released to theaters by Lionsgate (rawrXD). With beautiful cinematography and a rather star studded cast, this modern classic is also rather good. The plot being that a famous author, Harlan Thrombey, was found dead, his death ruled a suicide. A private investigator is hired to look into the death by an unknown character, the private investigator speaking in riddles and seeming to always have a next step. 

The toxic Thrombey family are the suspects as well as his at home nurse, Marta, with more than just one secret being exposed. The film takes place several weeks after the death, setting up the family with their conflicting interviews of their accounts of the night. Marta is the prime suspect for she was the last person to be with Harlan, but is ultimately the most morally sound character. The story is told through flashbacks during the characters interviews and during the villain reveal with a high action ending. WoW. That was a lot, but long of the short, the culprit tried to kill their grandfather for their inheritance by switching his medication labels, but failed because Marta is a good nurse. Harlan did commit suicide to protect Marta, and the culprit was arrested for murder and attempt of murder, Marta was the only one who lived happliy ever after. 

Thinking back to the points I listed at the end of the first paragraph and comparing the two films based on those two points, what would you find? Would it be that Rian Johnson, the  director and writer of “Knives Out,” watched his copy of “Hoodwinked!” and liked the plot? Cause that’s what I’m thinking. When I watched “Hoodwinked!” last week, I noticed a lot of similarities….weird…..Anyway if you want to watch the two and compare, I can lend you my dvd, that I’m surprised still works honestly, because it is literally nowhere on the internet.