Evil Under the Sun (1982)
Directed by Guy Hamilton
An opulent beach resort provides a scenic background to this amusing whodunit as Poirot attempts to uncover the nefarious evildoer behind the strangling of a notorious stage star.
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What critics compared Evil Under the Sun to
This past month, directors of four Netflix films were invited to curate some personal favorites; thanks to Rian Johnson’s mystery-minded picks, I ended up seeing a very nice 35mm print of Evil Under the Sun , a fairly ideal Agatha Christie adaptation that, unsurprisingly, is indeed a key reference point for Glass Onion , which borrows its first-act mechanics of bringing suspects to an island and running through all their motives, and its third act in ways that would be unfair to reveal; the second act successfully goes its own structural way.
Like Knives Out , this sequel pays homage to classic whodunnits (the many versions of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None come to mind, as does Evil Under the Sun ), but much fun comes thanks to its many surprises—I will not be the one to spoil them.
Evoking the feel of seaside murder mysteries like Evil Under The Sun (1982) and The Last of Sheila (1973) (this one particularly, given its similar absurdity), Glass Onion ramps up the broad caricatures, silly one-liners, and genuinely stupid (“stupid” is a term of endearment in my household) sight gags, all of which are wondrously funny, but, more than that, they rarely ever don’t have a callback to something important later.
But the Christie adaptations that followed — “Death on the Nile” (1978), “The Mirror Crack’d” (1980), “Evil Under the Sun” (1982) — were half-baked suspense films that felt, collectively, like the fading embers of a genre.
Many folks enjoy a good mystery, so maybe Branagh should shoot for “Evil Under the Sun” in 2024?
Sin embargo, estamos a años luz de filmes similares como por ejemplo, Evil under the Sun de 1982 con Peter Ustinov y Maggie Smith.
Brannagh obviously had great fun here and (spoilers, if you want them) it’s highly likely that his Poirot will be featuring in another whole run of glossy Christie filmings, with new, again-all-star casts perhaps signing on right now for fresh versions of Death On The Nile, Evil Under The Sun and so forth.
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But, look at classic Christie versions like “Death on the Nile“, “Murder on the Orient Express” and “Evil Under The Sun”.
Writer-director Rian Johnson, still being nerd-roasted for his smash-hit Star Wars installment, The Last Jedi , happily acknowledges his influences in constructing Knives Out —primarily Agatha Christie novels and the movies made from them ( Death on the Nile , Evil Under the Sun ), as well as pictures like Gosford Park and the super-tricky Deathtrap .