If there’s a discussion that the chattering classes on social media love in this season, it is what counts as a holiday movie and what does not. In that spirit, I declare the 2025 "Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery" a holiday movie, with its church setting, familiar faces cooped up in small rooms, unearthing family gossip and ethos of forgive and forget in this festive season.
Since its first airing in 2019, Rian Johnson’s "Knives Out" franchise seems to have constantly been in the public consciousness, no doubt largely because of Daniel Craig’s detective Benoit Blanc and his endlessly memeable face. It is a favorite, if formulaic comfort watch, of the locked room mystery variety, a-la-Agatha Christie. I had seen the first one, skipped the second because I did not think it could offer anything new, but felt myself drawn to it again this time around, when I was at a loose end to find something to watch. And "Knives Out" caters precisely to that need, and once you’ve seen it, you feel you haven’t wasted your time because there are enough cinematic and political references to keep it interesting.
2025’s offering is about the young priest Jud Duplenticy, who has anger issues (he used to be a boxer) and who is appointed to a parish in Upstate New York, to work along the charismatic priest Jefferson Wicks. The reason this third "Knives Out" has been much talked about is our young priest being played by Josh O’Connor. O’Connor is the new designated darling of "connoisseur" cinema, which means he has acted in pretentious (and often beautiful) films such as "La chimera" (2022) and the "The Mastermind" (2025). I do not mind him. In fact, I have a soft spot for him from his days playing Lawrence Durrel as a very young man in "The Durrells’ (2016-2019) – but I do not understand this apotheosis. May he enjoy it while it lasts, the good lad.
When Jud arrives at his new parish, he is confronted by the monsignor, who seems to have dwindled his flock to a faithful few who like his fire and brimstone sermons. The camerawork in the church is excellent in creating an atmosphere of doom, with the trace of a huge cross behind the altar: the absence of the real thing is explained later. I had last seen Josh Brolin as an angry dad in the excellent horror film "Weapons" (2025), but his character here reminds me more of the priest in the series "Midnight Mass" (2021), about yet another strange priest and his loyal flock that expects miracles.
Rian Johnson, writer and director of the film, seems to have chosen the members of Wicks’s loyal congregation in a way to encompass all the ills of contemporary American society. Take the media-savvy Cy Draven, who wants to break into politics and has a little speech where he explains how he has tried to exploit all aspects of the culture war. He has so far failed to garner a following and is using Wicks’s fiery speeches as a hook.
As each character is introduced to us, we try to work out who has the makings of a murderer. Glenn Close’s character, Martha Delacroix, is a strong contender, for when have we ever seen her play a good woman? Martha is presented as the most religious of the group. While the others seem to be in the "cult" due to Wicks’s charismatic character, she is there for Jesus and believes in such things as bleeding crosses and resurrection. Jud’s, yet again, is another type of Christianity that seems mostly to be concerned with providing solace for the afflicted. There is another character who we identify immediately as a spiritual character because he is played by Andrew Scott, of the "hot priest" fame from "Fleabag" (2016-2019). Here, however, Scott’s character’s "spirituality" is very transactional. Lee Ross is a "formerly best-selling" author who wants to find a good story and get his creativity back.
Johnson keeps us entertained with these stock characters of 21st-century America, but also performs a "trick" with the narrative frame. We get all the above information from Jud, whose voice over we hear from the beginning and see scenes of him actually putting all this to paper. And where is the hero of the series, Benoit Blanc, in all this, you may enquire? Well, he is the one who has asked Jud to write the whole incident down from the day he arrived in the parish, so that he may see if Jud has missed anything when describing the scene of the murder to Blanc.
Our young assistant priest is the first to be on the scene of the murder, and much hinges on how he perceives what he saw. He is, consequently, the prime suspect, and it is pretty sweet to watch Blanc save him from getting arrested several times by either presenting arguments as to "reasonable doubt" or simply whisking him away from the clutches of the deadpan sheriff played by Mila Kunis.
As is always the case with liberal storytelling, the voice of reason, Blanc, must be a no-nonsense atheist, and here he takes a fatherly (and didactic) stance towards the priest, as atheists must do when they speak to religious people. Jud and Blanc have their nice little banter about religion and God in the spirit of the festive season, with no hard feelings on either side.
All this unfolds against a backdrop of intrigue and improbable murder and resurrection, revealing the lengths to which the religious will go to win the hearts of the doubters with miracles and fireworks. There are crypts, diamonds, tragic backstories and a character whose unknown parentage proves crucial. Interestingly, what we come away with in the end is Jud’s journey of becoming a good priest, of putting the flock above personal interests and the interests of the church.
