Wake Up Dead Man is the darkest and most layered entry in Rian Johnson’s series, a knotty whodunit that swaps glass palaces for a small town parish and finds real charge in the pivot. The film opens on Jud Duplenticy, a young priest played by Josh O’Connor, whose past mistake in the boxing ring rerouted his life toward faith. Johnson is interested less in the institution than in individual mercy and failure, and O’Connor makes that tension visible in every choice.
Jud is reassigned after mouthing off, sent to assist a local celebrity cleric, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks. Josh Brolin plays Wicks as a charismatic thunderhead whose voice seems to shake the rafters. When Wicks turns up dead inside a tiny side cubby at the front of the church, the crime looks like a locked room within a locked room. Mila Kunis’ Chief Geraldine Scott calls in Benoit Blanc, and Daniel Craig glides in with the old lace and molasses, only to share the stage more evenly than before.
The parish overflows with suspects, and the casting gives the gallery texture instead of caricature. Jeremy Renner’s Dr. Nat Sharp, Kerry Washington’s lawyer Vera Draven, Daryl McCormack’s opportunist politician Cy Draven, Andrew Scott’s sci-fi author Lee Ross, Cailee Spaeny’s former concert cellist Simone, Glenn Close’s devout organizer Martha Delacroix, and Thomas Haden Church’s groundskeeper each get motives and a moment to hook you. Johnson stacks the Jenga tower and lets it sway, then keeps you watching for the hand that will nudge it free.
O’Connor is the franchise’s best new piece of casting. He gives Jud an open face and a frayed conscience, the kind of goodness that is always in danger of breaking under pressure. Craig remains a pleasure, but here he often feels like a partner rather than the whole show, which gives the film a different rhythm and a welcome sense of discovery. Brolin, meanwhile, burns hot enough that his absence after the murder still radiates.
The investigation is patient and unusually downbeat for the series. Johnson’s earlier films feasted on the rich and ridiculous. This one lingers in pews and kitchens and parking lots, takes faith seriously as a subject, and lets grief leak in along the edges. The tone recalls The Last Jedi more than Glass Onion, a willingness to smuggle big questions into franchise entertainment.
When the solution arrives, it satisfies both as mechanics and meaning. The staging answers the impossible geography of the murder with a method that plays fair inside the series’ heightened rules, and the motive folds cleanly back into the film’s ideas about power, performance, and guilt. The third act clicks through reveals with a confidence that had gone missing in the last outing.
It is not without bloat. At 145 minutes the middle stretch wanders and a few subplots feel like detours en route to the good stuff. Still, the performances are strong across the board, the mood holds, and Johnson’s writing finds a richer human seam than the earlier cases.
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If the series stops here, it stops on a high. Wake Up Dead Man respects its puzzle and the people caught inside it, and it gives Josh O’Connor a role that deepens the whole enterprise. It is the best Knives Out to date, a sharp, soulful mystery that leaves Benoit Blanc sounding a little softer and the world around him a little harder.
Score: 8/10
Wake Up Dead Man (2025)
- Cast: Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, Thomas Haden Church, Jeffrey Wright, Annie Hamilton
- Director: Rian Johnson
- Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
- Runtime: 145 minutes
- Rated: PG-13
- Release Date: December 12, 2025
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