The production design in Knives Out and Glᴀss Onion are part of the magic of the mystery franchise, and it took three real locations to make sure the Knives Out house was filmed just right. The 2019 movie Knives Out, directed by Rian Johnson, is a classic Agatha Christie-style mystery set in the modern era with all the tropes, twists, and puzzles that were once a staple of mystery-movie storytelling. Starring a huge ensemble cast and led by Daniel Craig as the gentlemanly, eccentric, and flamboyant Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), Knives Out was an immediate hit.

Knives Out is replete with hidden details in the production design and costuming, with everything carefully selected and placed to help bring the hyperreal world of Knives Out to life. To this end, the look of Knives Out is fantastic. Like the board game Clue, and the film that came after, which has a not insignificant amount of influence on Knives Out, every character has a distinct style and look and each room of the large Thrombey mansion where the movie is set is ornately decorated and detailed. It took three different locations to composite the mansion alone.

1890 Gothic Revival Mansion Built Just Outside Boston

Used For Exterior SH๏τs Of Harlan Thrombey’s House

For the exterior of the Knives Out house, location scouts found a wonderfully maintained 1890 Gothic Revival mansion built just outside Boston, Mᴀssachusetts that was exactly the look the producers wanted (via TheWrap). The exact location of the mansion has been kept confidential per contractual obligations, but it is known that it’s located in Natick, which is about 10 miles west of Boston (via BrandsAndFilms). The mansion sits on 92 acres near Lake Waban. With its spires, dark brick, and dark roof tiles, it’s an excellent example of Gothic Revival.

Gothic Revival is an architectural style reminiscent of the medieval style, and first became popular in the mid-19th century (via PHMC). It’s considered a style suitable for country settings, and it can most frequently be observed in churches. Decorative wood is a key feature of the style, as are pointed arches, steeply pitched roofs, slender columns, and Norman castle-like towers with crenelated parapets. All these features serve to create a beautiful but imposing look suitable for an elderly mystery novelist like Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer).

This style perfectly suits the tone of Knives Out. It’s an intimidating and ancient location where it seems like mysteries could be hidden within the very foundations of the old home. It’s also gorgeous and fits the bill as a place that the Thrombey family would be willing to kill over.

The Historic Ames Mansion In Mᴀssachusetts’ Borderland State Park

The Interiors For Knives Out Were Filmed There

While the Natick mansion was perfect for the exterior of the Knives Out home, it wasn’t right for the interiors. Instead, producers found another mansion that was better suited for the film’s aesthetic. They found the historic Ames Mansion in Mᴀssachusetts’ Borderland State Park, which is a 20-room historic site and previously appeared in Martin Scorsese’s horror-thriller Shutter Island. Production designer David Crank said about the look of the Thrombey home,

“There wasn’t a specific kind of architecture that Rian was looking for. The general rule was that both the inside and outside of the house needed to look like the sort of house that Harlan would describe in one of his mysteries. The moment we walked into the mansion we knew right away that it had the personality we needed.”

One of the major influences for Knives Out was the 1972 Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine mystery film, Sleuth, and in that film, the mansion where the movie takes place is filled with moving dolls and toys, which is why Crank and his team littered their own set with doll houses, puppets, and other marionette type crafts. Thrombey is a mystery novelist, so his home had to look like it belonged to someone who spent their days thinking of twists and considering the minute details of everything, which the Ames Mansion and Nantick home effectively recreate.

A Constructed Office On A Sound Stage

Used Only For Harlan’s Office

There was one piece of the Knives Out mansion location that had to be built from scratch and that was Harlan’s office, a location frequently revisited in Knives Out as characters sneak in and out of it throughout the movie. The Ames Mansion did not have the appropriate floor plan for the novelist’s cozy, warm, red sanctum. So Crank and his team built the office and the adjoining hallway on a sound stage and made sure that the layout of the office matched the movements of characters in the script, and made sense within the layout of the mansion.

With its curved ceiling, and large space for cameras, Harlan’s office actually would not have fit within the dimensions of the Ames Mansion, but it’s close enough and the positioning is correct enough that most people would not notice. This was a critical set in the film and Crank and his team only had three weeks to build it. The combination of a sound stage set, the Ames Mansion, and the Nantick house all combined to form a foreboding, beautiful, grand, and ancient house where Benoit Blanc would feel right at home solving a thrilling but dangerous case.

The Glᴀss Onion: A Knives Out Mystery Mansion Was Filmed In Porto Heli, Greece

Knives Out 3 Is In Production

The Knives Out sequel, Glᴀss Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, was filmed primarily in Greece with a few other filming locations thrown in, including New York, Connecticut, and Serbia. The mᴀssive mansion that Edward Norton’s Miles Bron lives in and gives its name to the movie is a real luxury resort in Porto Heli, Greece, called Amanzoe (Villa 20) (via Netflix). The large resort also doubled as a H๏τel for the cast, many of whom brought their families along. As Johnson put it,

“It felt like a summer vacation where we also made a movie.”

At one point, the resort was listed on Zillow, with details such as 26 acres of land, a 29,000 sq ft building, 17 bedrooms, 22 bathrooms, panoramic views of the Aegean, the тιтular crystal atrium sitting atop it all (via HouseAndGarden). Before anyone gets too excited, the listing price of $450,000,000 gives away that this was a clever marketing stunt for the movie. More telling, that glᴀss onion dome was CGI’d on top of the resort (via AtlasOfWonders).

As for Wake Up ᴅᴇᴀᴅ Man: A Knives Out Mystery, the third film in the Knives Out franchise, filming wrapped in August 2024 with some of it taking place in London, England and other nearby towns (via TheTrainline). It remains to be seen if Knives Out 3 will feature a similarly memorable location as Knives Out and Glᴀss Onion, but with Rian Johnson at the helm again, the odds of a beautiful setting being a key piece of the movie are high.