Rian Johnson’s detective franchise rolls into a trilogy with its strongest instalment yet. After the indulgence of the sprawling second movie, Wake Up Dead Man doesn’t quite recapture the magical double act of Daniel Craig and Ana de Armas that sold so much of the first film, but it wisely pulls things back to a corrupted parish riddled with a broad dysfunctional family, superstitions and an impossible puzzle.

Knives Out is a brash concept for all the sleight of hand: create an ensemble, an impossible crime and send in Daniel Craig’s drawling Benoit Blanc. Wake Up Dead Man—this time plucking its title from a U2 song—shows how it can all fit together, with the inveterate detective sidling up against not just a fiendish crime, but religion too. 

Wake Up Dead Man has fun with the established principles of Catholic orthodoxy, the cult of a controlling priest, and the underdog story of an ex-boxer. Josh O’Connor is that underdog, and the emotional core in the third instalment, filling the role filled by de Armas in the first and Janelle Monae in the second. His fleshed-out young priest is a marvel from the first scene (first punch), to the point it almost feels like a lack of confidence that Johnson provides a flash of Blanc in the introduction before O’Connor’s Reverend Jud Duplenticy takes over for a packed half an hour set-up.

Former prizefighter Duplenticy is given one last chance by joining the parish of Monsignor Wicks. Tightly controlled by Wicks is a rabble of core parishioners (new church attendees being quickly dispatched by a pointed pulpit diatribe), each with a rainbow of reasons for their devotion to Wicks. Father Duplenticy struggles to get through to them until an impossible murder in front of the congregation on Good Friday leaves the parish at odds, leaving the local police chief no choice but to bring in consulting detective Benoit Blanc. 

A devout atheist, Blanc sets about unravelling the locked room mystery while pulling the young priest, who’s increasingly a prime suspect, into his confidence. But when Easter Sunday rolls around and an impossible resurrection arrives, this could prove to be the one case Blanc can’t solve.

He has tough acts to follow, but O’Connor’s priest could be the best foil in a Knives Out film yet. One of the actors of the moment—certainly the 2025 London Film Festival—the rounded character—tough but open, challenging but a believer—is exquisitely cast in O’Connor’s easygoing soft, but fist-ready, form. He carries the film. 

Johnson gets things off to a strong start by front-loading the film with gags, carried mainly by Duplenticy. It’s a bold call, feeling like a shout against Blanc rather than a response to his absence. That’s not to say that the script gets serious when Craig finally pops up, but it finds better ways to respect and use Craig and his drawl of a sense of humour than Glass Onion managed. When Blanc first meets Duplenticy in the parish church, it’s a telling scene that refreshes and adds to the detective’s character, reminding us how well Johnson can do that. 

Almost every member of the cast brings their A-game to the flock of disaffected, delusionally devout or opportunist. Having them dotted around the town calls back to the familial connections of the first film and works well, particularly in the second and third acts, when the character carrying all our sympathies, Father Duplenticy, is ostracised, before gathering himself up to find out what’s going on.

Andrew Scott is the slippery sci-fi writer Lee Ross looking for a career boost. Glenn Close is Martha Delacroix, a pious believer and devoted follower of Wicks. Thomas Haden Church is her soppy but far less pious other half, the groundskeeper Samson. Jeremy Renner is disarming as the town doctor, Nat Sharp. Kerry Washington is tightly-wound lawyer Vera Draven, and Daryl McCormack is aspiring politician Cy Draven, her scheming brother. Completing the core team is Cailee Spaeny as disabled former concert cellist Simone Vivane.

It’s a heady ensemble, especially in opposition to Duplenticy, and as their fundamental beliefs and reasonings come to light. Some, naturally, fare better than others. As Blanc and Duplenticy form a tight-knit, if slightly awkward, male pairing, it’s the female characters who suffer the most. Washington and Spaeny are the most underused of the town’s ensemble, but it’s Mila Kunis as Geraldine Scott, the local police chief trying to keep track of Blanc’s impossible investigation, who gets the short end of the stick. Her role is as straight down the line and underplayed as you can get. Fortunately, Close is on hand to serve up just the melodramatic, austere presence any gothic-adjacent mystery needs to cover the gaps. 

Still, given the characters the male actors are wringing, particularly Josh Brolin, who has a whale of a time as Wicks, the belligerent, tricksy pastor, it’s a step back on the strong female cores previously at the heart of the franchise.

The crime itself runs the gamut of compelling mystery, classic whodunit, with a big call out to John Dickson Carr’s The Hollow Man, and some spirited darkness coming from a dash of the supernatural. There’s also some deliciously horrible old-school methods of body disposal. It keeps you guessing, it keeps Blanc on his toes, and it leaves all its characters in the frame for much of the film.

Overall, then, it’s immensely satisfying before you chuck in a short but scene-stealing screen reunion for Jeffrey Wright and Daniel Craig. Anyone not quite on board for a twisty mystery in the company of Johnson’s contrived group of suspects is unlikely to be converted. But it’s hard not to warm to a film determined to poke at Catholicism, MAGA, and even Substack. Wake Up Dead Man is unrepentant and irreverent, resurrecting the franchise on its third film. It’s just a bit of a shame it’s Netflix’s Christmas tentpole.