How much do I love thee, let me count the ways, and no disrespect whatsoever to the brilliant Ms Browning. Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out mystery, Wake Up Dead Man, is a multi-layered delight.
There is the iridescent Daniel Craig as a modern-day Hercule Poirot with his three-piece suit, floppy hair, oversized glasses and strange accent, whose eyes shine a blinding blue when his little grey cells latch on to a vital clue. The rest of the cast is no pushover either.
There is Josh O’Connor as the boxer-turned-priest (we first meet him after he clocks a nasty priest), who is a reluctant, conflicted Watson to Blanc’s Holmes. The closed circle of suspects is stuffed with excellent actors as well.
This image released by Netflix shows, from left, Cailee Spaeny, Kerry Washington, Thomas Haden Church, Glenn Close, and Daryl McCormack in a scene from “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.”
| Photo Credit:
JOHN WILSON
There is Jeremy Renner as the depressed doctor, Andrew Scott as the bestselling science fiction writer whose books are not selling as well as they should, Kerry Washington as the lawyer with a massive chip on her shoulder, Daryl McCormack, her adoptive son, who has political ambitions without the charisma to achieve them, Cailee Spaeny as the concert cellist who gave up playing because of a mysterious nerve illness, and Glenn Close as the church lady who seems too pious for her own good.
Josh Brolin plays a priest who has forgotten all the principles of Christianity and rules his congregation by fear and hatred. Mila Kunis is the police chief who calls in Blanc to solve the murder in the cathedral (during Good Friday service, no less), Thomas Haden Church is the groundskeeper who might know something, and Jeffrey Wright is the bishop batting for Father Jud (O’Connor).
Wake Up Dead Man (English)
Director: Rian Johnson
Cast: Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner
Runtime: 144 minutes
Storyline: A priest is murdered during Good Friday service, and the famous Benoit Blanc has to find out who among the many suspects is guilty
Two Johnson regulars are also part of the cast — Noah Segan plays a bar owner from whose bar the murder weapon might have come, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a baseball announcer.
If the cast is one of the reasons to take lusty bites out of this Rian Johnson offering, the setting, a neo-gothic church in New York, is another. Then there is the writing, with wonderful dialogue including a person being “a few beads short of a full rosary,” someone being dismissed as an “opportunistic poetaster” (Ben Jonson, respect) or Blanc modestly proclaiming himself a “proud heretic,” “incapable of not solving a case.”
Written by Rian Johnson, Wake Up Dead Man follows the conventions of a closed-door mystery, putting its inspiration front and centre by listing out the books that inspired the murder, including Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Dorothy L Sayers’ Whose Body?, John Dickson Carr’s The Hollow Man and two Agatha Christie classics, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and The Murder at the Vicarage.
This image released by Netflix shows Josh O’Connor, left, and Daniel Craig in a scene from “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.”
| Photo Credit:
JOHN WILSON
The church, though dismissed as having more to do with “Disneyland than Notre Dame,” is beautiful, as are the wild, wet woodlands around the church. The light — including the god-light coming through the stained glass windows and crowning the person who has seen the truth in a halo — is transcendental. Faith is an important motif running through the film, with several Road to Damascus moments.
Wake Up Dead Man might seem just that tad indulgent at least length-wise, but offers so many goodies in the form of plotting, dialogue, acting, setting and visuals, that Johnson is comprehensively forgiven. The game is most definitely afoot.
Wake Up Dead Man is currently streaming on Netflix
Published – December 12, 2025 06:24 pm IST
