Daniel Craig but mostly Josh O’Connor in Wake Up Dead Man

In Knives Out, writer/director Rian Johnson introduced us to Benoit Blanc, a dapper, slightly eccentric, Southern-fried detective who can solve any crime, no matter how complicated it may seem, with a perfect cozy mystery setting: an autumnal New England estate. In Glass Onion, he shipped Benoit Blanc to a sunny Greek isle to once again solve a pretzel of a murder, in a film that is less genre tribute and more satire. In his third “Knives Out mystery”, ominously titled Wake Up Dead Man, Johnson sends Benoit Blanc, and his willing audience, into a more personal mystery: that of faith.

Set amongst a flock of particularly embittered Catholics in upstate New York, Wake Up Dead Man begins not with Benoit Blanc, but with a young priest excellently named Father Jud Duplenticy. Josh O’Connor stars as Father Jud, giving a blazingly good performance that is as nuanced as it is fun. Jud is new to the priesthood after a misspent youth, during which he killed a man in the boxing ring. With his tattoos only just hidden by his orderly priest’s garb, Jud wants to turn his defensive boxer’s stance into a welcoming hug for the world. He is a man of fresh yet abiding faith, who believes in his calling and purpose as a man of God. Of course, he ends up accused of murder. 

O’Connor, sporting an astounding New York accent to rival Daniel Craig’s deep-fried Southern drawl, narrates the goings-on in his parish in a letter. He was sent to Chimney Rock to bolster the dwindling numbers there, only to find the priest in charge, the snobbish and angry Monsignor Wicks (a grizzled Josh Brolin) deliberately driving his flock away with hateful, exclusionary sermons until he is left with a small but fanatically devoted group of followers. Wicks has essentially started a cult that leans hard-right. Johnson has never been a subtle storyteller, and the parallels of a dangerous cult of hateful personality are clear, but abutting Monsignor Wicks’s hate parade is the far more grounded and open Father Jud.

An unfortunate rant, captured on camera by one of Wicks’s devotees, however, means Jud is the prime suspect when Wicks turns up dead—inside a locked room. It’s a “perfectly impossible crime” and so enters Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) about 30 minutes into the film. He’s there to discover the truth but quickly finds that Wicks’ twisted flock has closed ranks, and worse, Father Jud is not always his own best advocate, torn between wanting to prove himself innocent, do the right thing, tell the truth, burn down Wicks’s weird cult of personality, and uphold his values as a Christian. You can feel that Dead Man is written by someone who grew up religious only to walk away from organized faith—Father Jud is basically every lapsed believer’s dream of an ideal man of God. 

Dead Man is darker and moodier than the previous two Knives Out films; thematically, in that it explores more deeply the personal motivations that drive people into crime and punishment, but also literally. The stylings of Dead Man, centered around a crumbling church, an eerie graveyard, and abundant devil imagery, evoke the feelings of misty moors, dilapidated buildings, and decaying things that Edgar Allen Poe so loved. The cinematography from Steve Yedlin and music by Nathan Johnson contribute to the film’s moodiness, though it’s editor Bob Ducsay who lays out the narrative as a series of rooms, each one unlocking to take Father Jud and Benoit one step deeper into the mystery of Wicks’s death.

The sore spot of Dead Man is Kerry Washington as Vera Draven, one of Wicks’s parishioners who essentially sacrificed her life to please her critical father. She raises an adopted son, Cy (Daryl McCormack), a total psychopath and aspiring politician who never seems to realize his failure to gain a foothold in the ultra-conservative movement might be due to the color of his skin. He’s a YouTuber who livestreams everything, a barely passable joke until it becomes critical to the plot. 

Vera, though, is an odd one out in the story. She’s pious only through conformity, devoted because it was what her father expected. Her bitterness stems from sacrificing everything she wanted to appease a man who could never be satisfied with her. It’s a theme in Dead Man, as Wicks’s own deceased mother is referred to as a “harlot whore” throughout the film. Again, Johnson is not subtle, and the messaging is clear: women are easily used and abused in religion, scapegoated and burdened whenever and however it benefits the men around them. 

Josh O’Connor is so damn good as Father Jud, I would never wish away his performance, but there is a part of me that longs to see the version of Wake Up Dead Man that centers on Vera. That she is so much an afterthought strikes a discordant note when Johnson tries to land his point about how organized religion treats women. He mostly steers his themes well, it just doesn’t quite sit right when the church’s treatment of women becomes central to the story and all the women in the film are sitting on the sidelines. It’s a strange reinforcement of the thing Johnson tries to upend through his storytelling. Although Glenn Close gives a howler of a performance as fanatical housekeeper Martha.

Though Dead Man is darker than the previous films, it is still plenty fun. There are good jokes throughout, ranging from an A+ dick joke to Benoit’s tongue-twisting wordplay, but ultimately, this is a film defined by the limits of faith and understanding. Benoit, a self-proclaimed “heretic”, nevertheless develops respect for the sincerity of Father Jud’s belief. If the first film introduced Benoit as a consummate gentleman detective, and the second film tests his limits within systemic justice, this third film is a more personal test of what Benoit is and is not willing to do to solve a crime. 

Johnson’s best craft as a filmmaker comes through when Benoit is confronted with his own test of faith, and is humbled, if not before God, then before the godly. There are plenty of twists and turns, a locked-door murder to inspire Benoit Blanc to new heights, though it is Father Jud who emerges as the true detective, solving murders while investigating the depths of his own heart. Wake Up Dead Man is the most personal Knives Out film yet, and a cracking good mystery.

Wake Up Dead Man is playing in limited theaters now, and will stream exclusively on Netflix from December 12, 2025.