Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is not your ordinary Rian Johnson’s Knives Out movie. Adding to this perplexing trilogy, Wake Up Dead Man was created and released on Netflix on November 26th, 2025, joining its two other sibling films, Knives Out (2019) and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022).

Returning character Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) stars alongside Josh O’Connor, who portrays the protagonist, Father Jud Duplenticy.

Set in upstate New York, the film follows a young and aspiring pastor, Father Jud. After punching his way out of his old church, Father Jud is relocated to a small parish run by Monsignor Wicks. When he gets there, he finds not only Wicks (played by Josh Brolin) but also the monsignor’s cult-like followers, one of whom will soon end up killing their leader.

Unlike the previous two movies, WUDM has a way of tricking the audience by giving them more rather than less. For example, in the second film, Glass Onion, Detective Blanc works in secret with one of the characters, rather than side by side like he does with Father Jud in this film.

A similarity with the first two films is the suspiciousness of all the supporting characters. Like in any whodunit, directors/writers tend to portray the side characters in a shady and shifty manner. By doing this, the audience gets confused and questions everyone’s nature and motive. In WUDM, it’s almost like Rian Johnson set up the side characters by giving clues on why they wouldn’t commit the crime, rather than why they would.

Many viewers have expressed that this film is a whydunit versus the common whodunit, building up to a confession of why the character did it rather than who actually did it.

I personally enjoyed this movie and everything it had to offer. I appreciate how we, the audience, get to watch Father Jud and Detective Blanc blossom into a new friendship—one that I hope we get to see a bit of in the next movie—while also teaching each other different lessons. This film had such strong ties to Christianity and painted it in such a beautiful and thoughtful way that I’ve never seen any other films do. Everything was merely perfection in my eyes. From the acting to the cinematography, it was lovely.