Rian Johnson returns to his most beloved toybox and, in doing so, has made a Knives Out film that feels at once familiar and newly fierce. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery draws Benoit Blanc into a small-town parish where faith, fury and a locked-room style “impossible” death collide. Premiere reaction at festivals and the early press consensus agree: this third chapter may be the sharpest of the trio — darker, more philosophical, and surprisingly intimate in the ways it interrogates belief, culpability and community.
The film begins by settling us inside the volatile world of Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, a charismatic, long-haired cleric who presides over a fractious parish that’s equal parts piety and grievance. When Wicks dies in an impossible manner — during the climax of a sermon he steps into a closet and is found moments later pierced by a knife topped with a carved devil head — the congregation that adored and feared him becomes a field of suspects. Johnson uses that premise not only to stage a classic whodunit but to press into contemporary concerns: demagoguery disguised as righteousness, the politics of zeal, and how private sins calcify into public consequences. The film’s setup and its Gothic parish setting are rendered with exacting craft and macabre whimsy.
What critics consistently praise is how Johnson balances high-concept puzzlework with human feeling. Variety’s review called the film “lavishly staged” and argued that, unlike its immediate predecessor, this entry works on a more organic, human scale — a choice that pays dividends when the mystery tightens and the emotional reveal lands. That groundedness allows Johnson’s structural tricks to feel less like display and more like insight into the characters’ moral lives.
Across the festival circuit and in early reviews, commentators have singled out two performances in particular. Daniel Craig returns as Benoit Blanc with a slyer, richer drawl and a softness that lets the film’s quieter moral arguments breathe. Josh O’Connor, cast as the troubled young priest Jud Duplenticy, is the film’s moral fulcrum — a former boxer turned man of the cloth, alternately skeptical and devout, whose personal quest for repentance gives the procedural stakes a theological weight. Critics describe their pairing as the movie’s emotional lodestar: Blanc’s forensic rationalism meeting Jud’s insistence on spiritual redemption produces a philosophical tension that lives at the film’s center.
Reviews from major outlets underline how the film plays with whodunit mechanics while probing larger ideas. IndieWire called the movie a darker, Poe-inflected tale for our age of disinformation, praising Johnson’s appetite for the “minute logistics of homicide” and his willingness to make the murder puzzle also a meditation on the limits of reason. The Hollywood Reporter lauded the way the script folds confession into investigation, making revelation feel like spiritual unburdening; in this sense, the film is as much a drama of conscience as it is a mystery.
Industry critics have also praised Johnson’s tonal control: the film is often playful and witty — classic Knives Out DNA — but it also allows dark, unsettling grooves to develop. Where Glass Onion sometimes felt overstuffed and orchestral, Wake Up Dead Man is praised for its tighter focus and Gothic restraint. That doesn’t mean the film lacks spectacle; it simply channels Johnson’s appetite for invention into a setting and ensemble that reward close listening and patient deduction.
Festival reaction has been strong. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and earned enthusiastically positive notices from critics and audiences there, helping it debut with near-universal praise on early aggregator tallies. Rotten Tomatoes’ initial consensus and editorial coverage reflected that momentum, and by the time the film moved toward theatrical positioning and Netflix release plans it had accrued some of the most favorable early scores of the series.
Netflix’s release strategy echoes the platform’s playbook for prestige event cinema: a festival premiere, a limited theatrical window — opening in select theaters on November 26, 2025 — followed by streaming on Netflix on December 12, 2025. That hybrid rollout aligns with Johnson’s and the studio’s obvious desire for both awards visibility and mass accessibility, though trade coverage noted that Johnson had pushed for a longer theatrical run than the two-week window afforded. Either way, the film’s festival momentum positions it well for both critical conversation and popular reach.
Audience response in early screenings and online chatter matches the critical mood: viewers praise the puzzle, the performances and the way the film uses its murder-mechanic to ask urgent questions about faith and truth. Social discourse has homed in on the film’s tonal gambit — its willingness to invite both rationalist deduction (Benoit’s method) and theological empathy (Jud’s vocation). For many fans, that philosophical tension elevates the movie, making the final unspooling feel emotionally consequential rather than merely clever. Rotten Tomatoes and other aggregator snapshots show the film sitting very strongly among 2025 releases, reflecting broad enthusiasm.
Technically, the film is immaculate. Steve Yedlin’s cinematography captures the parish as both intimate confessional and stagey Gothic set-piece; Bob Ducsay’s editing keeps the film methodical yet alive to the small beats that register character; Nathan Johnson’s score underlines the film’s alternation between irony and awe. The ensemble — including Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny and Daryl McCormack — is uniformly excellent, each performer given room to shift between type and surprise, humor and menace. The production design and Johnson’s blocking turn the parish into a theater of suspicion where even the smallest gesture can carry narrative weight.
If there is a critique common among the more cautious reviews, it is that the film’s thematic ambition occasionally risks piling on: political allegory about demagoguery, metaphysical questions about faith, and dense murder logistics sometimes compete for airtime. But most critics suggest this is more an embarrassment of riches than a fatal flaw: Johnson’s appetite for complexity makes Wake Up Dead Man a richer puzzle to live inside, even if it occasionally tiptoes toward being a bit overstuffed.
Ultimately, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is a rare sequel that refines rather than repeats. It keeps the series’ signature pleasures — witty observation, clever misdirection, genre play — while deepening the moral stakes and human costs. For viewers who love puzzles with heart, and for anyone who appreciates genre cinema willing to ask big, uncomfortable questions, this third installment feels both timely and satisfyingly intricate.
The movie is written and directed by Rian Johnson and produced by Ram Bergman and Johnson’s T-Street banner, with Steve Yedlin behind the camera, Bob Ducsay editing, and Nathan Johnson composing the score. Leading the cast, Daniel Craig returns as Benoit Blanc, joined by Josh O’Connor as Jud Duplenticy, Glenn Close as Martha, Josh Brolin as Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack and Thomas Haden Church, among others. The film premiered at TIFF and moves into a limited theatrical release before streaming on Netflix on December 12, 2025.
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