By this point in the series, the formula is well-established; there is a \u201cperfectly impossible crime,\u201d so the Columbo-esque Blanc comes in, sizes things up, investigates the details and questions the clues, and then gathers the outsized cast of characters for his Poirot-style rundown of whodunit. A less appreciated but equally important piece of his puzzle is the Innocent Ingenue, a figure of sympathy who looks, at least briefly, like the most likely suspect: Ana de Armis in Knives Out<\/em>, Janelle Monae in Glass Onion<\/em>, and, in this installment, Josh O\u2019Connor as Rev. Jud Duplenticy, a streetwise priest and onetime boxer who is, by his description, \u201cYoung, dumb, and full of Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As punishment for an altercation with a dislikable deacon, Jud is sent to the small New York village of Chimney Rock, where Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) runs the Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude church with an iron fist. \u201cHis flock is shrinking, and even calcifying,\u201d Jud is told, and Wicks harbors no illusions as to why this upstart is there, greeting Jud with a pointed \u201cWelcome to my<\/em> church.\u201d He\u2019s a piece of work, delivering fierce homilies of fire and brimstone (\u201cAnger lets us fight back, take back the ground we\u2019ve lost\u201d), closing ranks around him so that only his loyalest followers bother to sit in the pews on Sundays. Jud sees what he\u2019s doing, and tries to call him on it, promising to \u201cdo whatever it takes to stop you,\u201d a threat that sounds like a motive when Wicks drops dead during the Good Friday service. <\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Blanc makes an even later entrance than usual, a good 30 minutes in, following a complex setup that methodically introduces the sprawling cast of characters – not only who they are, but how they\u2019re broken. Even without our franchise regular, the opening section is never less than involving, thanks to the trust Johnson has earned in these previous installments. We put ourselves in his hands, and those of his tip-top cast; all are good, but Glenn Close may be the MVP, holding our attention in long, key scenes where she has essentially perform exposition dumps, as both the actor and the character hide true motivations and half-truths inside rhetorical flourishes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of the humor in these early scenes is on the cheap side (lots of priests swearing and talking about masturbation), and Blanc gets his laughs, and stakes his claim, right away by describing himself as a \u201cproud heretic.\u201d This makes him a fine counterweight to O\u2019Connor, the magnetic co-star of Challengers <\/em>and The Mastermind<\/em>, who may have the most to prove here, and does so; this guy\u2019s got the movie-star goods, but you\u2019ll never catch him showing off. He finds the character\u2019s inner metronome, the sense of righteousness that powers him through even his moments of anger and weakness. And because he establishes those fine qualities, Johnson is able to navigate a turn in the material, acknowledging and even admiring acts of genuine faith and goodness, with a nimbleness that\u2019s kind of awe-inspiring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the body count increases, the murders get stranger and more ornate; there are jump scares and dramatic thunderstorms and red herrings, not just in terms of plotting, but in the structure of such an oft-told tale. As both a writer and director, Johnson is simply very good at this, at crafting these seemingly impossible crimes, and building airtight mysteries around them; all are witty, giddy, and unapologetically brainy, while retaining their crowd-pleasing qualities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some cringed at the explicitly online-political pieces of Knives Out<\/em>, and they\u2019ll feel the same about some of this material, but to tell a story about modern religion without getting political would be wildly dishonest. But he also doesn\u2019t sneer at the faith of his characters; Blanc may be a proud heretic, but I don\u2019t think Johnson is, and that matters. Wake Up Dead Man<\/em> does everything you want the third Knives Out<\/em> movie to do \u2014 and then it goes deeper, which is some neat trick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Wake Up Dead Man” is in select theaters Wednesday and streams December 12 on Netflix.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Wake-Up-Dead-Man2-1024x683.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nA-<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n