Wake Up Dead Man Review: Believe in Benoit Blanc

So who did the dastardly deed? Was it the local doctor (Jeremy Renner)? Was it the groundskeeper (Thomas Haden Church)? The local lawyer (Kerry Washington) or the aspiring politician she claims is her son (Daryl McCormack)? The cellist with chronic pain praying for a miracle (Cailee Spaeny) or the has-been SF writer (Andrew Scott) or the devout housekeeper (Glenn Close)?

Because someone committed murder in the remote upstate New York town of Chimney Rock. This being Wake Up Dead Man, Rian Johnson’s latest homage to early 20th century detective fiction under the A Knives Out Mystery imprint, there’s a roster of A-listers and rising stars signed up for the perp walk.

The one person we know who definitely didn’t have the blade in his hand is young priest Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor, Challengers), a nervy and ill-shaven former boxer seeking redemption through the Catholic Church. Even though he’s caught with literal blood on his hands, this being a Knives Out film that’s a misdirect that makes him prime suspect. He did kill someone, just not the recently deceased, and not recently, and all that is revealed in a flashback so lengthy and filled with plot that it could be a film in its own right. However, it’s all precursor to the arrival of the great detective, Benoit Blanc. With that signature kinda-New Orleans purr and a new distinctive look, Daniel Craig returns as the sleuth with a yearning for the unsolvable.

These films, much like the works of Agatha Christie that so clearly inspired them, have an equation to them. As with the original Knives Out and the clumsier Glass Onion, the focus is on the suspect with Blanc as the leading supporting role, 10 steps behind the real villain until he’s suddenly five steps ahead. It’s a formula that Johnson understands perfectly and is still finding endless entertainment within for himself and the audience.

What really defines each film is Johnson’s subject of inquiry for each film. Not the crime, but the context. In Knives Out, it was the corrupting power of old money and entitlement. Glass Onion was far more scattershot, an overly broad exploration of bro-y internet culture from influencers to investors. Wake Up Dead Man, with its ecumenical setting and the title’s implied promise of resurrection, is really a meditation on faith and devotion, with Duplenticy misguidedly pouring his misplaced guilt into acts of contrition that get in the way of Blanc solving the case.

As always, Craig is clearly having a delightful time delivering absurd monologues, this time seemingly in Christoph Waltz cosplay, but as always Blanc is there to illuminate the chief suspect. Openly atheist, Blanc’s disinterest in Duplenticy’s theological contortions keeps a respectful distance between the two, one that O’Connor fills with a rather personable angst. He becomes a midpoint between Blanc’s dedication to deduction and cold logic, and the Old Testament prognostications of Chimney Rock’s other, more turbulent priest. The wild-eyed and belligerent Father Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), who demands that everyone call him monsignor, is shown in those flashbacks to have turned his sinecure into a literal bully pulpit. Even though they never share the screen, Craig’s tousle-haired sophistication and gentleness clashes exquisitely with Brolin’s charismatic, snarling fervor and messianic tendencies.

Yet the theme of faith is also where Wake Up Dead Man falls short. By presenting Duplenticy as a fulcrum of faith, Johnson ends up selling Blanc’s own beliefs short, especially in one scene where he seems to sell his principles out completely. Johnson may need reminding that atheists aren’t just here to provide comfort to believers.

That misstep aside, Wake Up Dead Man is a cunning and entertaining mystery, a return to form for the franchise. Next time, though (and a “next time” seems inevitable), it may be time to change the equation, and finally make Blanc the actual hero of his own story.

This article appears in November 28 • 2025.