Wake Up Dead Man
Daniel Craig returns as the wily Benoit Blanc in the third outing of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out whodunnit saga.
Scooby-doo stuff: Mila Kunis, Daniel Craig and Josh O’Connor
Image courtesy of Netflix.
In the third instalment of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out franchise, the formula remains the same. A group of seriously whacked out characters are introduced, a murder is committed and when all fingers are pointed at the wrong culprit, Benoit Blanc springs up from the Deep South to cast a beady eye over the proceedings. This time, Johnson has set his whodunit in the world of organised religion, where an idealistic priest, Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor), is still searching for theological answers. After punching out a tiresome deacon, he is reassigned to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude in upstate New York, run by a charismatic minister going by the monicker of ‘Monsignor Jefferson Wicks’ (Josh Brolin).
“A few beads short of a full rosary,” Wicks seems to take delight in shaming members of his congregation to the point where they flee the church during his sermon – never to return. By the time Father Jud turns up, there are just a few loyal members of Wick’s flock left, each and every one a somewhat colourful character. In confession with Father Jud, Wicks elaborates on the minutiae of his frequent masturbatory habits, although preferring not to mention his secret drinking. For the gentle Jud, it’s a toxic parish, where God Himself would seem to be a stern task master. Yet Wicks seems to hold his parishioners in a powerful grip, and when Jud challenges him, his videoed threat is plastered all over social media…
For the first thirty-eight minutes of Johnson’s whodunnit, there is an air of The Thursday Murder Club about it all, which might please some, but will dishearten others. Here, it’s actually a ‘Good Friday Murder’ and Jud looks as guilty as hell, although it may not be that simple. The minute Benoit Blanc turns up – thirty-eight minutes in, to be precise – things improve substantially, as the Southern private investigator ponders the “textbook example of a perfectly impossible crime – the stuff of detective fiction”. But Blanc is nothing if not confident, adding that, “I’m incapable of not solving a crime. You’ll see. It’s fun.” And fun it is, although the increasingly elaborate red herrings start to turn a darker shade of purple. There are only so many times one’s brain can resound with the thud of WTF.
Even for those not enamoured of the whodunnit, Johnson’s homage to the genre, of encouraging us to think outside the box, is infectious. The writer-director even name checks his predecessors – John Dickson Carr, Edgar Allan Poe, Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie – to whom he (and Blanc) are indebted.
While still respectably tailored, Blanc borders on the dishevelled here, with grey stubble and his hair falling over his collar, perhaps mirroring the shambles of what could be his toughest case yet. Daniel Craig makes it all worthwhile, and Josh O’Connor is an excellent foil, his sincerity giving the material a surprising depth (the value of organised religion is well argued). In the negative margin is Glenn Close’s church sexton, blending the wide-eyed excesses of Norma Desmond and Cruella de Vil, reducing the film to high camp. Even so, there are some genuinely funny moments and Rian Johnson’s inventive plotting is guaranteed to keep us knitting our brows until the final curtain.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, Thomas Haden Church, Jeffrey Wright, Annie Hamilton, James Faulkner, Bridget Everett, Noah Segan, Cecilia Blair, and the voice of Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Dir Rian Johnson, Pro Ram Bergman and Rian Johnson, Screenplay Rian Johnson, Ph Steve Yedlin, Pro Des Rick Heinrichs, Ed Bob Ducsay, Music Nathan Johnson, Costumes Jenny Eagan, Sound Ren Klyce, Dialect coaches Diego Daniel Pardo, William Conacher and Victoria Hanlin.
T-Street Productions/Ram Bergman Productions-Netflix.
144 mins. USA. 2025. UK and US Rel: 12 December 2025. Cert. 12A.
