Rian Johnson returns with Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, the third installment in his popular murder mystery series — and while Daniel Craig reprises his role as the Southern sleuth Benoit Blanc, it’s Josh O’Connor who quietly steals the show.
This time, Johnson trades sun-drenched excess for something moodier and more intimate. Gone is the gaudy glamour of Glass Onion’s Greek island. In its place: a misty upstate New York town, where a small Catholic church and rectory set the stage for another intricately layered whodunit. The shift recalls the grounded charm of the original Knives Out, yet the film carries a more brooding tone, drawing influence from G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown tales and John Dickson Carr’s locked-room mystery classic The Hollow Man.
O’Connor plays Jud Duplenticy, a firebrand preacher whose sermons echo contemporary politics, evoking the charisma and menace of a populist figurehead. As accusations swirl and secrets unravel, his layered performance anchors the narrative with intensity and nuance. Despite Daniel Craig’s reliably sharp turn as Blanc, O’Connor’s raw magnetism commands attention, bringing unexpected emotional weight to the puzzle.
The star-studded ensemble is stacked: Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, and Jeremy Renner all orbit the mystery with varying degrees of depth. Some shine, others are sidelined, and the script occasionally buckles under the weight of too many characters and subplots. Johnson’s screenplay juggles satire, social commentary, and classic detective tropes, but at times, it feels overstuffed and less cohesive than its predecessors.
Still, Johnson’s eye for atmosphere and flair for misdirection remain sharp. He layers his mystery with religious symbolism, political undertones, and theatrical reveals. While Wake Up Dead Man may not be as effortlessly entertaining as the first Knives Out, it offers a richer thematic landscape and a darker tonal shift that shows Johnson evolving the series rather than repeating it.
Ultimately, it’s O’Connor’s haunting performance and the film’s gothic ambiance that make this threequel memorable. Even as Blanc solves another twisting case, it’s the unsettling echoes of truth beneath the fiction that linger longest.
Verdict: An ambitious, uneven, but compelling mystery elevated by Josh O’Connor’s breakout performance and a return to the genre’s moody roots.
