Since experiencing the online ridicule and corporate betrayal that was The Last Jedi fallout, filmmaker Rion Johnson has only directed Benoit Blanc mysteries. He’s also, of course, written and directed two seasons of Poker Face, which is its own pulpy serial with an eccentric crime solver at the helm. 2019’s Knives Out was a thrilling resurrection of the Christie-style detective tale, which had that perfect Hollywood brew: movie star led, buoyed by a top-to-bottom fantastic ensemble, and enhanced by a newcomer in their own star-making performance. The movie isn’t perfect but it was such a brilliant execution of an original idea, which felt so rare among studio films. Six years later, and now we have two more Blanc mysteries, each distinct and unique to themselves, varied in style and tone. Knives Out was classic Christie, Glass Onion was an eat-the-rich lark, and now Wake Up Dead Man, which is a surprisingly effective meditation on the powers and dangers of faith.

Daniel Craig returns as Blanc. This time he sports a chin-length bob, but still has the rusted Southern accent that has come to define the character. Like Poirot’s mustache, Blanc’s accent is an over-the-top flourish meant to counteract his precise intuition. Blanc is the star of the Knives Out films, but he’s seldom the main character. The first movie followed Ana de Armas’s embattled nurse, while Glass Onion leaned on the twist that Janelle Monae was (surprise!) playing two different characters all along. In Wake Up Dead Man, out protagonist is Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor), a former boxer turned Catholic priest who still finds himself fighting his more violent urges. An ill-timed punch gets him sent to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, a middle-of-nowhere parish headed by the vociferous Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), who immediately tests Jud’s patience for vulgarity. Wicks’s sermons are angry, often downright hateful, regurgitations of right wing reactionary rhetoric.

Wicks’s polarizing style has alienated most of the visitors to the church, with the only ones left being his most devoted sycophants. This includes his devoted assistant Martha (Glenn Close) whose known Wicks since they were children, as well as the local groundskeeper, Samson (Thomas Haden Church). There’s also Vera (Kerry Washington), an embittered lawyer; Lee (Andrew Scott), a conspiratorial author; Cy (Darryl McCormack) a conservative political hopeful who posts Wicks’s sermons on his YouTube page; Simone (Cailee Spaeny) a disabled cellist who believes Wicks can heal her; and Nat (Jeremy Renner), an alcoholic obsessed with his ex-wife. This group is filled with disappointments and resentments that keep them chained to this town and Wicks’s pulpit. When Jud tries to breach the wayward group, he meets resistance. They’re too devoted to their toxic leader.

Wicks ends up being the corpse that sets the mystery for Wake Up Dead Man. There’s humor in this film, but it’s certainly the most subdued of the three. Jud’s own spiritual crisis gets wrapped into the drama of Wicks and his disciples, and when Wicks ends up dead, Jud becomes the number one suspect. The main person who believes in his innocence is Blanc, who arrives on the scene, despite the consternation of police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis), and begins licking his lips at the possibility of solving an “impossible crime”. When it comes to the murder itself, and the details as they begin to reveal themselves, it’s classic Rion Johnson trickery, with plenty of misdirects and macguffins. With these films and Poker Face, Johnson has shown that he can literally churn these out at will. The machinations are not as tightly wound as they may present, but Johnson is a good enough writer to keep you too entertained to really notice.

Which is to say that Benoit Blanc, and the byzantine plots that surround him, are beginning to feel like a comfort blanket for Johnson, who has obviously found the corner of Hollywood that pleases him most and seems to have no interest in turning back to the days of Brick and Looper. Perhaps this is why the three Knives Out films are so different from one another, a grasp at making different films while still keeping an arm around the life jacket that is his most successful character creation to date. That’s not to say that Wake Up Dead Man is a disappointment or that the Knives Out series is showing diminishing returns. It’s just that the vision of the kind of filmmaker Rion Johnson could have been before The Last Jedi seems completely lost to time.

All three films take aim at MAGA or some MAGA-adjacent cultural cornerstone. It’s hard not to think of JD Vance and the trad wife army while watching Wicks spewing such belligerent vitriol in the name of God. It’s always the most clumsy element of these films, and that’s no different here. The best part of Wake Up Dead Man is Josh O’Connor, who plays the complex moral and spiritual turmoil beautifully without sacrificing the film’s broad appeal. Between this film and Kelly Reichardt’s The Mastermind, O’Connor is having quite the Fall of 2025. The Reichardt film is one of the best of the year, this film is not, but both are further examples of O’Connor’s offbeat movie stardom. Wake Up Dead Man is his first chance headlining a major Hollywood movie (albeit on streaming on Netflix), and he rises to the occasion. His exciting presence pushes this film toward a truly emotional conclusion, which is no easy task.

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Written and Directed by Rion Johnson