TIFF 50: Benoit Blanc looks for grace in "Wake Up Dead Man"
Sunday, September 7, 2025 at 9:00AM 
If Wake Up Dead Man is the weakest Knives Out mystery yet, the blame lies at the feet of its outsized thematic ambition. In that regard, the new flick outdoes its predecessors and then some, touching on the same satirical points and terminally online observations of our socio-political present while stretching hands up, toward the heavens, in search of an ineffable grace. Rian Johnson thus tackles religion and belief and absolution with a Gothic twist and perverse glee, a complex proposal further complicated by the way he keeps playing with the whodunnit model in his usual deconstructionist manner. The director boldly adds Poe and Carr to the pantheon of authors he'll crib from in a metatextual game that reaches out an invitation to its audience. Share the pleasure of my mischief, it whispers in your ear…
Discussing a film such as this without revealing too many plot points is a challenge I'm not sure how to resolve. Most audiences will have to wait months before they get to Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, and, keeping faithful to the director's plea, I don't want to jeopardize an experience that'll be best served by a fresh, open mind and minimal information. So, forgive me for the vagueness to come, as I try to make sense of Benoit Blanc's latest misadventure while withholding its secrets. It should be safe to say it all revolves around a Catholic church withering away under the tyrannical thumb of a priest who proselytizes a doctrine of rage and sees empathy as weakness, if not a sin outright.
He's amassed a small flock of dutiful sheep who'll stay by his side, come hell or high water, radicalized by a worldview that inspires outrage as fuel for personal power. It's not too hard to see where Johnson is going with this, critique-wise. He's as blunt as ever, subtle in the same way a grand piano dropped on your head is subtle. But I digress, the priest is a Trumpian leader waiting to make the leap into politics, and the stage is set for another murder mystery à la Christie. Still, our entry point into the affair isn't the messianic monsignor or his acolytes, but another clergyman sent to the small town as punishment after punching his way out of a disagreement with another man of the cloth.
Young, dumb and full of Christ, he's the picture's protagonist and the latest "Benoit Blanc girl" who'll be by the Southern detective's side as he solves a murder that, for all intents and purposes, should be impossible. It's a locked-room mystery of the classical kind, or so it seems. By the end, Wake Up Dead Man has twisted and turned its central narrative impetus to the point where convolution reigns supreme above logic and Blanc is forced to pull the truth out of nowhere in ways he didn't quite do for the original Knives Out and Glass Onion. It's still a lot of fun, though. It's also much heavier than anticipated, going back to that thematic ambition whose profundity both unbalances and enriches the text.
Johnson is playing with the purpose at the heart of whodunnits and our fascination with the genre, questioning provincial notions of punitive justice in the face of something much harder to articulate but also much more critical for the salvation of our souls. He does all this while going for some of the broadest humor in the series, peppering running gags over the movie's first half that have the distinct taste of Mel Brooks about them. Formally, too, he's going for it, bolder than ever, though maybe not as finessed as it would be ideal. The director's collaboration with cinematographer Steve Yedlin remains a huge issue.
It's not that Wake Up Dead Man is devoid of great shots and functional visual storytelling. Those qualities are present but only intermittently, more often manifest in the church's interior and passages which openly flirt with Gothic horror. On other occasions, the lighting situation is atrocious enough to warrant accusations of incompetence. Some shots of actors are so poorly lit that they conceal the direction of their gaze, so indiscriminate in the way of shadows that the end result is a muddy muddled mess. Oh well, this was also true of the first Knives Out so it's not like the series is set on a path of aesthetic decline. If anything, it's a lateral move.
But enough about that. Since the narrative and its thematic execution can only be analyzed in the broadest terms lest spoilers surge through this review, I might as well get down to the business of acting. Because whatever the Knives Out movies may be, they are a showcase for their starry casts, and Wake Up Dead Man is no different. Indeed, even when underserved by the script or direction, these thespians shine like supernovas blasting their brightness through the emptiness of space. Consider Jeffrey Wright in a role so small it didn't warrant mention in the movie's promotional material. Funny as hell, he proves, once again, that few contemporary writers know their way around dialogue like he does.
Kerry Washington is also a tad wasted, sinking her teeth into a couple of juicy scenes with the kind of fervor I haven't seen from her in ages. One particular outburst is almost begging the movie audience to applaud. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Cailee Spaeny is given quite a lot to do but struggles to make sense of the film's most unsolvable role. Jeremy Renner is surprisingly subdued in his incel part, while Daryl McCormack throws himself into the vileness of a failed political opportunist hoping to make it big with the GOP through Youtuber fame. Andrew Scott is a whole lot of fun, and Thomas Hayden Church curiously moving in a saturnine sort of way.
The main attractions, however, are Josh Brolin, Daniel Craig, Josh O'Connor and Glenn Close in ascending order of brilliance. Brolin plays the tyrant in liturgical costume with the right level of venal abandon, sparing nothing and no one, not even himself, from the grotesque possibilities of such a register. Craig is back for a more sidelined take on Benoit Blanc, but he still gets his showcase moments, including some Foghorn Leghorn speechifying that, like with Washington's big scene, made me want to stand up and clap. As the film's primary lead, O'Connor is as great as he reliably is, seeming as if he stepped out of some long-lost Cagney vehicle about a repentant boxer turned priest.
However, nobody else reaches the sheer heights Glenn Close gets to in her best performance since The Wife. Johnson has gifted her a miraculous part that sees her styled like a Goth Mrs. Danvers and taken to the extremes of an Agnes Moorehead tour de force. At first, she's mostly a Brooksian gag, but the story unfolds and, with it, Close unravels a tapestry of technical wonder and genre-hopping superpowers. She's campy and hilarious, she's majestic and heartbreaking, a bottomless pool of malice that calls itself pious and a lost lamb looking for its shepherd, inscrutable and overwhelmingly vulnerable all in the span of a scene. Heavens, but after witnessing such greatness, I can't help but wish Johnson gets to do these movies forever. Praise be the Knives Out franchise and let's all pray for a fourth and fifth and sixth divine delight to come. Amen.
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery will be theatrically released on November 26. It drops on Netflix on December 12.
Reader Comments (4)
I’m seeing it this week as part of a family outing! We wanted to see something that we could all enjoy and agree on. And yes, we are trying to go in not knowing too much about it.
I love TIFF. It has such a local and loyal audience. This is the 50th anniversary of TIFF!
I’ve chatted with people in line who have gone to the festival for decades. I love the people who seek out the most obscure movies, thinking that they’ll never get a chance to see them anywhere else. (True). And the ones who have found a niche that really speaks to them. One person told me he chooses every science fiction movie, especially from Eastern Europe.
I have far less tickets this year than I would like, but am looking forward to the ones I have. I’ve been surprised at what has been sold out. I tried to get tickets for “Franz”, a Franz Kafka picture by great director Agnieska Holland, but they were sold out. Who would have guessed?
An Oscar race between Glenn Close and Amy Madigan?
Delicious!
I have tried to avoiid much of the review due to wanting to see it with fresh eyes but I notice you singled out Close,is she Oscar worthy good.
Thanks for the review. I read a few of the reviews online and it seems there are major agreements among critics on Wake Up Dead Man:
- it is darker than previous iterations; Gothic with references to Father Brown (cf GK Chesterton)
- deeply emotional yet also hilarious
- The standouts were: Brolin, Close and O'Connor
- Daniel Craig is a bit sidelined by Josh O'Connor's luminousity; steals scenes effortlessly
- aside from Glenn Close's painterly version of Mrs Danvers, her entrance in the film is said to be worth the movie price alone
- Cailee Spaeny is underutilised (underwritten part? editing?)
- convincing ending; not a cop-out
The reviews are varied on others with some citing Kerry Washington and Andrew Scott as also good. A few others said Wake Up Dead Man is the weakest of the three films.
I think Close's performance here will be highlighted in the media given her winless Oscar streak but more than Wake Up Dead Man, the Close-adjacent movie I really want to see is the cinematic version of Tove Jansson's The Summer Book. Bummed to miss it when it had its premiere at BFI last year.