‘The idiot versions of all of us will end up on Netflix,’ claims one of the anxious suspects in the third installment of the Knives Out franchise, featuring the investigations by the famous detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) and the fruits of the fertile mind of writer/director Rian Johnson. No spoilers are required; Wake Up Dead Man doesn’t drop for most of us till later this week, so we’ll keep the plot points firmly under wraps. But if Glass Onion felt a bit overstuffed and displayed far too much fidelity to the most staid traditions of the whodunnit? genre, this third part feels like the Blanc sequence is beginning to find its most developed and reliably amusing form.
A man comes back from the dead; is this a religious act, or a crime in progress? Wrestling with theological questions is an ideal way to show us another side of Blanc, who is investigating the violent murder of Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) an incendiary preacher who seems to be motivated by his own aggressive ideas rather than any notions of spirituality. That puts fire-brand Wicks on a collision course with his idealistic younger assistant Reverend Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) who becomes the immediate and obvious suspect when Wicks is found murdered after one of his sermons. Former boxer Duplenticy is up for the fight, and calls on Benoit Blanc’s services to find out which one of the parishioners is responsible; Glenn Close, Jeremy Renner, Mila Kunis, Andrew Scott, Kerry Washington, Cailee Spaeny and Thomas Hayden Church make up the starry role-call, and we haven’t even got the the surprise resurrection of the title…
‘There’s GOD in DOGE’ reads a sneaky newspaper headline here, and there’s potential for political parables about the faithless Trump/Epstein times we’re living through in 2025, but Johnson plays them down in favour of a parable about religious love and hate. A constant visual motif has the sunshine playing through the stained glass windows of the church during the dialogue, a neat way for Johnson to index how to feel about what the characters are saying. And the words we hear are tart and provocative as Johnson manages to turn the cliches inside out; there’s nothing blander or more predictable than when film-makers or their characters start wittering on about the meaning ‘storytelling’, but Benoit and Duplenticy’s first meeting is an instant classic, establishing their different ideas about belief but also their immediate sympathy and understanding of each other, a wordy, intelligent, thoughtful moment that writing gurus Peter and Anthony Shaffer might have approved of.
So get ready for arcane details; enjoy the tease of mechanical Lazarus doors, Devil’s head lamps and Oprah’s reading list; part of the charm here is that the stormy, pseudo Gothic feel isn’t old or traditional, but ersatz; Wicks’ upstate New York church is ‘closer to Disneyland’ than ancient Rome. Unexpected spiritual grace, and Blanc’s live and let live approach to the wayward displays of faith he observes is part of what makes Wake Up Dead Man’s approach so refreshing. At a time when hate and murder are being deliberately normalised, Rian Johnson’s film manages to provide the delicious mystery and thrills we seek, but also delivers on a promise to offer a firm moralistic story that’s inclusive and open to all. With Craig and Johnson apparently happy to make more of these enjoyable streaming flicks, cinema’s loss is streaming’s gain, and Benoit Blanc defies the odds to avoid sinking to the level of the much derided, invariably idiotic Netflix fare.
