{"id":283249,"date":"2025-11-25T22:16:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T22:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/283249\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T22:16:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T22:16:08","slug":"another-lively-knives-out-whodunit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/283249\/","title":{"rendered":"Another lively Knives Out whodunit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each of writer-director Rian Johnson\u2019s Knives Out whodunits, like the paperbacks they draw from and sometimes literally cite, is defined by the setting of its murder. Where the original<\/a> squeezed class critique from its drawing room of squabbling one-percenters and Glass Onion<\/a> over-indulged on a Mediterranean takedown of its billionaire tech bro\u2019s inner circle, Wake Up Dead Man welcomes Johnson\u2019s blend of snark and sincerity into a church that houses both crime and suspects. More quaintly focused than the exuberant previous film, though with no shortage of eccentric characters or longwinded side stories, Wake Up Dead Man agreeably seeks answers both existential and earthly.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean that there\u2019s an excess of self-importance weighing down either the movie (which is a bit less satirically heavy-handed than the previous films) or Daniel Craig\u2019s excessive detective Benoit Blanc. The Tennessee Williams fop that Cajun Bobby Hill<\/a> would be jealous of maintains his spry yet principled charm with ease; perhaps more easily than ever, considering he isn\u2019t the main draw this time around. That honor belongs to the strongest of the franchise\u2019s sidekicks: Reverend Jud Duplenticy (Josh O\u2019Connor). O\u2019Connor plays his ex-boxer holy man with an affable small-town earnestness, recounting his arrival in the upstate New York town of Chimney Rock\u2014and the subsequent drama his placement at Our Lady Of Perpetual Fortitude brings\u2014with both feet on the ground.<\/p>\n

Even if he\u2019s been shipped off to Nowheresville because he socked a fellow man of the cloth, Duplenticy provides necessary stability to the story. The rural churchgoing community he enters is a perfectly warm and catty setting for a mystery, with plenty of built-in thematic heft. O\u2019Connor\u2019s genuine performance shoulders the film\u2019s interest in religion\u2014what people seek from it, what it can provide, the white lies it tells to get to something true\u2014while deftly avoiding being, well, preachy. These are nuanced ideas, ideas that could easily backfire as Wake Up Dead Man connects the things that religion asks you to take on faith with the agreed-upon narratives of an insular community. It takes all of O\u2019Connor\u2019s soft-spoken, goofy-grinned prowess to keep these ideas from being fully overwhelmed by the congregation he\u2019s swept up into, and the priest who commands them from his fire-and-brimstone pulpit (Josh Brolin\u2019s hilariously imposing, quite literally masturbatory Monsignor Jefferson Wicks).<\/p>\n

Wicks looks like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments and sermonizes from a platform that wouldn\u2019t be out of place in Moby Dick\u2018s outrageous church. When Blanc mutters \u201cScooby Dooby Doo\u201d to himself\u2014as beautifully pronounced as \u201ccellar door\u201d\u2014it\u2019s not just because the mystery Wake Up Dead Man stumbles into has an air of the performatively supernatural. It\u2019s also because everyone Blanc and his devout acquaintance run into has the bearing of a Hanna-Barbera baddie. Johnson continues to excel at introducing a crowd of archetypical little nuisances, defined in part by their possible motive for the crime all but pinned on the hapless Duplenticy: The murder of Monsignor Wicks.<\/p>\n

Among these suspect-parishioners are a down-and-out doctor (Jeremy Renner), a flailing right-wing politician\/YouTuber (Daryl McCormack), and Wicks\u2019 do-it-all assistant (Glenn Close). But listing the cast members is almost as tedious as Wake Up Dead Man\u2018s most overstuffed moments and water-treading detours. We could get into all the faces that pop up here and there, all the could-be killers who riff on a talking point of the day. (Andrew Scott plays a reclusive writer whose success has nosedived and left him in a state of conspiratorial Substackery, for example.) But this swarm serves a simple dual purpose: Overwhelm the audience with suspicious options and fill the film\u2019s Gothic-inflected aesthetic with color. The former works out through sheer volume; the latter succeeds thanks to actors like Thomas Haden Church and Bridget Everett, gems shining amid the dense ensemble.<\/p>\n

As much fun as it is as Johnson piles on the oddballs, the cavalcade of cartoonish characters also draws another connection to Scooby-Doo: The story gets shaggy, quick. Over his three Knives Out films, Johnson has deftly toyed with and reversed the typical murder-mystery structure, but he\u2019s still run into an inherent problem with the genre. In order to provide plenty of plausible crooks, there ends up being a whole lot of chaff to sort through over the course of the films, which can begin to feel like stalling once the initial adrenaline of the set-ups has worn off. Johnson, while still a snappier storyteller than most filmmakers three movies deep into a franchise, has so much affection for every side character and returning performer (Noah Segan must of course get his few lines in) that Wake Up Dead Man\u2018s two-and-a-half hours can drag.<\/p>\n

Some of this is designed. Purposeful dilly-dallying as a distraction, as time for the audience to ruminate on what\u2019s already been revealed. But do it for too long, or pack in too much to chew on, and the slower parts of the film threaten to bog down the whole. And yet, even at its most mired, Wake Up Dead Man is so clever and silly\u2014and is the best-looking of the series, with cinematographer Steve Yedlin juicing things up with divine lighting gags, Raging Bull-like assaults on the senses, and a nightmarish flashback\u2014that it\u2019s a pleasure to while away the hours with it.<\/p>\n

Would it be enjoyable to spend any amount of time doing anything with O\u2019Connor\u2019s flailing reverend and Craig\u2019s country-slick detective? Absolutely. More of a buddy movie than the previous entries, the balance these actors strike is as delicious as the ever-complicating case they\u2019re attempting to crack. As a locked-door mystery (Blanc\u2019s Agatha Christie wheelhouse) evolves into something less invested in clues and more in emotion (a domain better suited for Duplenticy), Johnson\u2019s deft blend of tones\u2014self-awareness, savviness, and cornball sincerity\u2014leads to a larger analysis of its setting more revealing than a dozen confessional monologues. It\u2019s here that Rian Johnson continues to mature, even within the confines of the throwback franchise he\u2019s built for himself. Wake Up Dead Man is an engrossing mystery to spend an evening under a blanket with, but it\u2019s also one whose questions are bigger and better than ever.<\/p>\n

Director: Rian Johnson
Writer: Rian Johnson
Starring: Daniel Craig, Josh O\u2019Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, Thomas Haden Church
Release Date: November 26, 2025; December 12, 2025 (Netflix)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Each of writer-director Rian Johnson\u2019s Knives Out whodunits, like the paperbacks they draw from and sometimes literally cite,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-283249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}