The third of Rian Johnson's Knives Out murder-mysteries is at the very least a step up from 2022's Glass Onion. Where that immediate predecessor proved as moneyed, slick and antiseptically surfacey as its chosen tech-bro milieu (and, indeed, the series' new Netflix platform), Wake Up Dead Man digs a little deeper and shows a willingness to get its hands dirty every so often. The theme this time is the stories we tell, and those we allow to proliferate; the first half benches Daniel Craig's wafty sleuth Benoit Blanc to trade in theological debate and religious schism. Mildly disgraced Catholic cleric Josh O'Connor is sent to a leafy new diocese to serve as second-in-command - and, it's hoped, liberal counterbalance - to fire-and-brimstone-preaching Monsignor Josh Brolin, busy bonding his dwindling congregation (devout organist Glenn Close, sottish doctor Jeremy Renner, cranky author Andrew Scott, disabled cellist Callie Spaeny, aloof lawyer Kerry Washington, right-wing vlogger Daryl McCormack) by inflaming their blood. This localised radicalisation project is halted one Good Friday when Brolin is discovered in a sealed side chapel with a blade in his back. Re-enter Blanc - his rationalism strong as ever, his travel bag loaded with locked-room whodunnits - so as to reaffirm the junior priest's faith and break up an apparently murderous personality cult. Any resemblances to real-world American politics in 2025 are for legal reasons coincidental, but you wouldn't be alone in spotting them.
The four words that lodged in my head early on - Jonathan Creek Christmas special - thereafter refused to budge. After three instalments, it's become clear the Knives Outs have become ultra-expensive TV movies, constructed in the manner of the longer Columbo specials or a half-season of Johnson's own, just-cancelled cable project Poker Face. Certain of this season's Netflix productions - del Toro's Frankenstein, Clint Bentley's Train Dreams - will lose a lot from being watched on an app. Despite the odd little touch that reminds you of Johnson's once-thriving theatrical career - some well-choreographed light changes in the chapel, say - Wake Up Dead Man won't. The money's gone on actors' fees and production design: the chapel's interplay of light and dark, a marble mausoleum that proves central to the mystery, a domestic basement roughly the size of a small warehouse. The idea with this series has always been to make more space for the pleasures of the ensemble: some of those pleasures endure here, but Johnson's never been able to match the fractious dynamism of his original cast. (This troupe does what's asked of them on a scene-by-scene basis, but the one player you really want to hang out with is church handyman Thomas Haden Church, and he's largely sidelined, watching baseball in his shed with a Coke in hand.) Even as telly, Wake Up Dead Man relies upon viewer indulgence: golden-age detective drama could tie up cases twice as tangled inside half of these 144 minutes. Much as Blanc comes over as a passive presence this time, bumbling around in the background while the energised O'Connor takes up the ecclesiastical and investigative slack, Johnson is himself cutting loose, stretching his legs and taking things easy with the Knives Out series. That's fine when the approach generates the entertaining fluff it does here, but there's no particular need to race to the cinema for it; you'll be able to watch it at home over the holidays - for free - with a big tub of chocolates on the sofa next to you.
Wake Up Dead Man is now playing in selected cinemas, and will be available to stream on Netflix from December 12.
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