Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) – Miraculous

Released: 12th December
Seen: 12th December

In 2019, Rian Johnson released Knives Out to an unsuspecting public, and the world embraced and fell in love with his all-star cast and murder mystery. It was a true masterpiece, a definitive work in the murder mystery genre that had people salivating for more. That’s when Netflix did one of the few truly cool things that they’ve done in a long time and gave Rian Johnson 400 million dollars to make two new entries in the franchise, the first one of those was Glass Onion in 2022, which was also absolutely brilliant and proved that Knives Out had genuine franchise potential. Now we’ve been blessed with Wake Up Dead Man, the third movie in the Knives Out Franchise, and I’m fully at the point of insisting that Rian Johnson continue making these films until either he or Daniel Craig is no longer with us, because once again he’s made an actual masterpiece.

This Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) adventure revolves around a young priest, Father Jud (Josh O’Connor), who has been moved to a new parish after getting into a fight with another priest (which is possibly the best reason ever for a priest to be moved to a new parish). This new parish is small and unorthodox, led by the angrily charismatic Msgr. Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), who leads fire and brimstone services with assistance from the uber-religious Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close). These services are attended by the town doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), superstar lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington) and her adoptive son Cy (Daryl McCormack), author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott) and lastly disabled concert cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny), all of whom believe in Wicks above anyone else, even when he does things that might go against the actual teachings of Christ. During one particularly intense sermon, on Easter Friday no less, Jefferson Wicks stepped into a closet in the middle of a service and was found murdered with a knife in his back mere seconds later. With no reasonable explanation possible for how this murder occurred, it’s up to Benoit Blanc to solve a seemingly impossible murder.

By now, the Knives Out franchise has a few particularly well-known tropes. First, The main character is ostracised by the larger group, but is generally a good person. Second, Everyone other than Blanc and whoever is the main character of the story are complete fucking assholes. Third, the film will inevitably tie everything in to modern politics and pointedly call out several extreme viewpoints through the art of satire. Wake Up Dead Man does every single one of these, indeed, it is just taking the first two films and changing mostly character, location and how the actual murder was done, but damn it, it still works. These tropes that this franchise has set up are insanely effective and still capable of surprising you with how well they’re put together, to the point where it feels fresh again. It’s like playing several games of Cluedo, the board and pieces are all the same but there’s a different outcome waiting after you’ve done it all and it’s still a tonne of fun.

Once again, Rian Johnson has not only prepared a pitch-perfect mystery full of twists and turns that have you guessing until the very last second who did the murder but once again, he’s done his favourite trick of hiding all the evidence in plain sight and sneaking it past everyone. It’s honestly brilliant how he pulled it off so well, you can go into Wake Up Dead Man actively looking for the obvious clue right in front of you and it will slip by so easily because Rian is an evil bastard who enjoys playing the audience like a fiddle. The unravelling mystery will have you theorising how it could end, coming up with a dozen potential culprits and explanations and sure enough, once Blanc gets on his pulpit and explains everything it makes perfect sense. Once again, a perfect mystery that’s satisfying and thrilling from start to finish, shocking no one who knows even a little about this franchise.

As usual, Daniel Craig knocks it out of the park with his performance. Benoit Blanc has easily been cemented up there among Miss Marples or Hercule Poirot in terms of truly legendary film detectives. The performance has always been dialled in so precisely, and once again Craig absolutely destroys, selling the intellect and humour of the character. The actual standout of the film is Josh O’Connell, who is the beating heart of Wake Up Dead Man, his pure unwavering goodness is undeniable and overwhelming at the same time. He’s the kind of priest that could make the most strident atheist turn up to church because he just seems like he wants to help people and it’s powerful. He has some of the most emotional scenes in the whole franchise, his phone call with the owner of a heavy machinery company will bring tears to your eyes just from his expressions alone. He really does steal the whole film, and Wake Up Dead Man is a film stuffed to the brim with brilliant performances (If this ends up being Glenn Close’s ninth Oscar nomination, I’m not gonna be shocked). 

It is also worth noting that Wake Up Dead Man is likely the most visually spectacular film in the franchise. All the Knives Out films have looked incredible. Steve Yedlin has been the cinematographer for almost all of Rian’s movies, and he’s always been pretty damn great, but this is Steve Yedlin showing off what he can do without restraint. It’s gorgeous, one of the best-looking films of the year and a triumph of adjusting the franchise’s visual style to fit the tone of the story. Wake Up Dead Man leans a lot more into gothic horror territory and so many of the shots needed to be as big and dramatic as possible and by god they are fantastic. Every time the door of the church opened and a single beam of light lit up the spot where a cross used to be, I wanted to hit the ground and thank the cinema gods for creating such a shot. 

After all this praise, the wildest thing about Wake Up Dead Man is that it’s pretty much the worst film in the franchise so far. If I were to rank the films in terms of quality, I cannot think of any way this film wouldn’t end up third on the list of films… and it’s a masterpiece, it’s actually insane how great this film is while still not being as good as the first two. That says a lot about how great this franchise is when the worst of the bunch is still borderline perfect. Even knowing the tropes, knowing the general structure of this kind of film, knowing what you kind of know about these movies going in, it’s still somehow able to be incredible.

Wake Up Dead Man is another absolutely brilliant entry in the absolutely brilliant Knives Out franchise that seems to be almost bulletproof at this point. It’s another glorious mystery filled with fantastic performances, hilarious, witty dialogue, some of the best shots in cinema this year and one of the most jaw-dropping reveals in a murder mystery. It’s another truly great film that shows that Netflix were onto something when they bought the rights to release a couple of sequels… Now if they could please take some of the money they plan on wasting by buying Warner Brothers and give it to Rian Johnson so he can make half a dozen more of these films, that would be great.