Murder Mystery 2

Let’s face it, much has happened since the release of Murder Mystery back in 2019; the original debuted on streamer Netflix a good eight weeks before Ryan Johnson’s Knives Out debuted in Toronto, revitalising the whodunit vibe and creating a franchise of its own that Netflix quickly snapped up at some cost. That left the original model, a simple, lightweight comedy-action vehicle for established stars Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston, somewhat redundant; from the perfunctory title onwards, Murder Mystery 2 is less about disrupting than adhering to cinematic conventions that reach back to The Thin Man in the 1930’s.

The bald 90 minute run time suggests contractual obligations, and yet the Murder Mystery franchise is undeniably popular; the prospect of this sequel brought the original back to number 2 in Netflix’s internal charts. Nick Spitz and his hairdresser wife Audrey have expanded on their crime-fighting success in the first film to set up their own detective agency, but their first case goes badly. The couple head off to Europe for the wedding of Vikram ‘The Maharajah’ Govindan (Adeel Akhtar), but his kidnapping disrupts their plans as they try to figure out who is on the ‘next to die’ list. A madcap van chase through Paris is the big action highlight on the way to a showdown with the unmasked killer on top of the Eiffel Tower, or rather the usual Netflix green-screen studio; Melanie Laurent, Mark Strong and others are amongst the suspects.

It feels pointless to point out the many and varied idiocies of the narrative featured in Jeremey Garelick’s film; the Murder Mystery franchise is not meant to be taken seriously, and even when Sandler is shot several times, cartoonish bandages serve instead of actual medical treatment. There’s a few reasonably modern jokes about heating bills and Billie Eilish, and a running gag about Sandler’s obsession with ‘unicorn cheese’; Sandler and Aniston work well together, and even if Murder Mystery 2 feels like a lazy option for both audiences and cast, it works the familiar action/comedy formula to reasonably satisfying effect.

‘Don’t you want it to be the killer, so they can kill us? …because I’m sick of this sh*t…’ Nick complains when an unseen assailant approaches, and it’s fair to say that the entire film gets the business of entertainment over with in undue haste. Murder Mystery 2, like the first film, is passable mass entertainment, but hangs on the coat-tails of cinema rather than having a USP of its own. The frequency of expected Knives Out product will probably dictate whether this franchise continues; it’s still a cut above Netflix’s traditionally anonymous fare.