Wake Up Dead Man A Knives Out Mystery review (2025)

Wake Up Dead Man A Knives Out Mystery is the third installment of Rian Johnson’s mystery whodunnit and it’s very close to being the best yet.

The only thing holding it back from topping the original entry in the series is the incredible ensemble as a whole had a larger role. For Wake Up Dead Man, the ensemble feels much more like supporting players instead of core elements to the film.

Daniel Craig (No Time to Die) is back as Benoit Blanc, the shrewd detective capable of cracking the seemingly most unsolvable murder mystery. This time, he’s called in to deal with the murder of Mons. Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin, Weapons). Like most of the opening act murder victims, Wicks was ironically, no saint. He bullied his congregation from the pulpit and generally made newcomers feel entirely unwelcome.

Father Jud Duplencity (Josh O’Connor, Challengers), recalls his first few months serving under Wicks as the assistant pastor at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude. Jud worked closely with clerk Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close, Guardians of the Galaxy) and groundskeeper Samson (Thomas Haden Church, Spider-Man: No Way Home).

Over time, Jud became well acquainted with the regular parishioners — attorney Vera Draven (Kerry Washington) and her would-be politician adopted son Cy (Daryl McCormack), Dr. Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott) and musician Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny). Each of them has their respective reasons for sticking with the church and Wicks, who can be incredibly charismatic when he’s not screaming hate and intolerance from the pulpit.

Blanc arrived on the behalf of police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis), who doesn’t have as lengthy a list of suspects, but doesn’t want to pin the murder on Jud without concrete evidence. Cy managing to record a heated conversation with Jud and Wicks notwithstanding.

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More so than most filmmakers when tackling religion or religious themes, Johnson doesn’t make every character trying to live out their faith to be horrible hypocrites.

Wicks absolutely represents the extremist hateful monsters hiding behind scripture in an attempt to justify their prejudice, but Jud is the welcome — and necessary counter voice.

Jud sees his faith, not as a weapon to ostracize others, but as a tool to bring them together. O’Connor doesn’t portray Jud as a perfect man, but one constantly aspiring to the right thing.

Johnson provides a far more nuanced take than just using faith or religion as a punching bag. Blanc is hardly going to become a disciple by the end of Wake Up Dead Man, but his conversations with Jud are some of the strongest aspects of the film. Largely due to Johnson avoiding the easy payoff of Blanc clowning Jud or poking holes at his faith at every turn.

While Blanc might not believe, he is at least respectful and appreciative of Jud’s convictions. Ironically, Johnson shows a commendable model for how the world could be better served if those on either side of the faith/religion conversation could be far more tolerant of each other. And if he can serve it up with Craig’s razor-sharp delivery matched by the steady calm tone of O’Connor? Even better.

Johnson continues his trend of casting Marvel Cinematic Universe players in each Knives Out film. The first installment had Chris Evans while Glass Onion had Edward Norton, Dave Bautista, Kathryn Hahn, Jessica Henwick and Ethan Hawke. Wake Up Dead Man adds another four with Brolin, Close, Haden Church and Renner.

The cast has a few quality moments, but it felt like there could have been more scenes with them interacting with each other and Benoit instead of Benoit doing detective work with Jud.

At two and a half hours, Wake Up Dead Man isn’t a quick movie, but Johnson paces it in a way that it doesn’t feel that long. The mystery sustains through the run time as he’s able to keep shifting the “obvious” culprit to another character in a manner that doesn’t come off as cheap.

This was another sharp installment in the Knives Out saga and with Johnson still delivering quality efforts like Wake Up Dead Man, there’s no reason that this should be the last entry in the series.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Photo Credit: Netflix

After watching Wake Up Dead Man, check out the first Knives Out on 4K on Amazon.

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