A Knives Out knock off, MURDER PARTY doesn’t quite have the knockout effect. Nevertheless, it is filled to the brim with colourful characters and surprise twists that entertain in timely manner as murder multiplies in the manor.

The story follows Jeanne, a brilliant architect who has a new assignment to renovate the sumptuous Daguerre mansion owned by an eccentric family head of a board game empire. Soon after arriving at the stately estate, her commissioning patron, the family patriarch, Cesar, is found dead and everyone present, of course, becomes a suspect.

Appropriating and subverting the everyone has a motive and then there were none trope, MURDER PARTY pokes fun at the family tensions template and brings a literal aspect to the old cliché, “and so the stage is set.”

Director and co-writer Nicolas Peskof has knitted pastiche and parody into a rhapsody of homicidal homage. “The game’s afoot” is another cliché given literal vantage as the country house becomes a games arcade, from perilous parlour to attic antics and basement discoveries.

Stretched to the seams with the sorts of things you can’t imagine happening outside the silver screen, MURDER PARTY boasts a bunch of actors happy to throw themselves into the heightened theatrics.

Alice Pol plays the perplexed architect and accidental sleuth, Jeanne, with a scathing skepticism and proficiency in smelling a rat and eyeing a red herring. She remains calm as those around her dissolve into hurling accusations and churning histrionics.

Cards are stacked, dice are loaded, and the finale falls foul, MURDER PARTY remains a trivial pursuit for those bored of board games and wanting to watch a bit of role play.