Mystery squared: ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ takes the ‘Knives Out’ franchise in a welcome darker direction

By Bob Grimm

Writer-director Rian Johnson has a successful trilogy with Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, the third adventure for super-detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig). By far, this is the gloomiest and most somber of the films—and it’s a welcome change for the series.

This time, Johnson sets his sights on a small church in New York where a shaky priest (Josh O’Connor) has been sent for a sort of rehabilitation. The church leader, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin, who has had a great 2025), is a controversial sort, prone to unorthodox ways, and the two immediately butt heads. Of course, somebody winds up dead under incredibly strange circumstances, and Benoit shows up (rather late in the film, actually) to sort things out.

These films are proving to be fun puzzlers, because Johnson does a good job of keeping audiences off-balance with a nice array of suspects, each of whom has a motive to kill. This time out, we get the likes of Glenn Close as a fanatical assistant to the monsignor, Jeremy Renner as the local doctor, Thomas Haden Church as the groundskeeper, Cailee Spaeny as a cellist who can no longer play due to illness, and Kerry Washington as an angry local attorney.

What’s fun here is that the mystery elements don’t end with the murder. There’s an additional, post-initial-killing mystery (suggested in the film’s title) that is as perplexing as the original death. This might be the most clever thing Johnson has done on film yet—and good luck trying to figure it out as it happens.

The conclusion is satisfying, and the entire cast has fun in each of their roles. I especially liked Renner’s alcoholic doctor and Close’s kind-of crazy local.

Craig is typically good here, anchoring the second half of the film and playing off a solid central performance from O’Connor. If you get the chance, O’Connor is also very good in the 2025 heist movie The Mastermind, which just became available to stream.

If you like a good murder mystery, Wake Up Dead Man qualifies. It will keep you guessing—and, more importantly, it will make you eager to see what Benoit Blanc is up to next. Since Johnson has said he already has the basic plot in mind for the next one, Blanc will more than likely return.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is now streaming on Netflix. It is also on the big screen at the Galaxy Victorian and the Carson Valley Cinemas.