TIFF 2025: ‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery’ is Rian Johnson’s First Disappointment
Rian Johnson is known for subverting audience expectations and rejecting traditional narrative structures, which is why I’m always drawn to his work, even if some of them weren’t as acclaimed as others. I will still be the first to defend and praise Star Wars: The Last Jedi as the best film of 2017, one of the decade’s crowning achievements, and the best Star Wars movie ever made. Johnson has now turned his attention to the murder mystery and has completed a trio of Knives Out chapters, with Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc at the forefront and center of them all. The most recent installment being Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, which I attended a screening for at TIFF 2025.
Wake Up Dead Man: the story
Wake Up Dead Man immediately subverts our expectations by having Benoit Blanc take a backseat. He does not properly appear until a good forty minutes into the picture. Instead, Josh O’Connor’s Reverend Jud Duplenticy narrates the events that lead to Monsignor Jefferson Wicks’ (Josh Brolin) murder. I won’t try to reveal much apart from what was in the trailer. Still, I can say that Jud is immediately targeted as the primary suspect, as he had a close but complicated relationship with the Monsignor.
That being said, each frequent churchgoer we meet over the course of Wake Up Dead Man has skeletons in their closet they do not want Blanc or Jud to reveal. They are Doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), science-fiction author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott), disabled former cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny), siblings Vera (Kerry Washington) and Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), along with church employees Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close) and Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church).
Everyone thinks Jud killed Wick, whose unconventional liturgies pervert the very essence of Catholicism and have corrupted otherwise good people into straying down dark paths. Of course, this being a Rian Johnson movie, the case isn’t as clear-cut as it seems, and, when he eventually arrives in the film, Blanc begins to unravel the murder by finding weak links in how such a killing could be accomplished and who the primary suspect may be.
The first half of the movie is rock solid. While Johnson’s writing is a bit on the wobbly side, there isn’t a moment wasted in pulling the audience into this incredibly complex and actively dark case. Things gets progressively more somber—and even spiritual—as Blanc uncovers more clues, with Jud and police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis). Religious fanaticism goes through the wringer, alongside more spiritual concepts that, on paper, sound fascinating for Johnson to explore. But that is actively undercooked in favor of a succession of deception (and subversion) for the audience to be theoretically “blown away” by something that doesn’t really make sense when you stop and think about it.
Steve Yedlin’s visual language is once again captivating, with Bob Ducsay’s cutting accompanying the film’s most operatic camera movements. This time around, Rian Johnson leans into a Gothic aesthetic to fit in with its spiritually charged thematic beats. There is a bevy of impeccably crafted sequences that fully delve into this approach, including nightmarish flashbacks and a slow-motion confrontation between Jud and mysterious characters that had the entire Toronto International Film Festival audience on the edge of their seats.
Interesting religious commentary tarnished by unmemorable subversions
Religion is the main point of focus of Wake Up Dead Man, but not in the way you think. It’s more attuned to the current-day distortion of Catholicism that only MAGA-hat-wearing, flag-waving Americans do, and it’s shockingly accurate. It even feels timelier in the wake of an even more polarized country, distorting scripture and the meaning behind Christianity to foster their own personal gains and cloud their hateful rhetoric with Bible verses. The comparison between modern-day right-wing influencers and what Johnson showcases in his movie is pretty apt. That could make the usual suspects feel uncomfortable, but this commentary is what practically saves Wake Up Dead Man from petering out.
Unfortunately, when Johnson begins to subvert expectations and twist the narrative on its head, this is where Wake Up Dead Man starts to falter. Daniel Craig’s performance as Blanc is unimpeachable and hits all the right notes you’d expect from the character. He also shares an active sense of play with Josh O’Connor, who is the movie’s figure of attention, after Ana de Armas and Janelle Monáe in the previous two installments. They have more screentime than the rest of its incredible cast, whose talents are sadly wasted on minute, unmemorable appearances. The exception is Glenn Close, whose final monologue is a compelling showcase of her abilities. Everyone else is not as present as we would’ve hoped, which makes Wake Up Dead Man feel less like an ensemble piece than the previous Knives Out entries, despite a lengthier runtime allowing for more character and story development.
However, the biggest sin of all isn’t how most of its cast are relegated to fleeting glimpses of their talents (a noticeable lack of Cailee Spaeny is concerning, though), but in how Johnson’s denouement actively tarnishes most of the commentary he wants to make in favor of a succession of deceptive tricks that are neither clever nor surprising.
Without giving anything away (as the film will release in two months from now), what could’ve been a (literal and figurative) revelation turns into a big whimper when you find out how Monsignor Wicks was murdered, who did it, and what their reasons were. Yes, it’s complicated and elaborate, as any good “subversion of expectations” piece from Rian Johnson must be, but it’s also shockingly confounding, emotionally hollow, and unimpressive, which none of his previous films were. They were smartly written, challenged the audience, and made them think about how movies should be structured instead of the dull, pedestrian “three-act” structure most screenwriters adopt.
Final thoughts on Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
Unlike previous Knives Out installments, the emotional impact of Wake Up Dead Man’s climax isn’t there. Worse yet, each reveal contradicts the other until it turns into a jumbled, almost incoherent mess that subverts its own subversions until it becomes nothing but “subverception.” There’s no point behind its twists but tricking the audience into making them fall into (pretty obvious) traps with no tangible way out.
I get that this is Johnson’s bread and butter, and, until this, his filmography has been nothing but straight masterpieces. Yet, there’s very little in Wake Up Dead Man’s reveal that works in its favor or feels as fresh as the previous two Knives Out movies. Just like Benoit Blanc being tired of solving cases that are seemingly “impossible” to crack, Rian Johnson feels worn out from trying to twist the same formula in different directions to give audiences something genuinely different.
In a way, Wake Up Dead Man feels more like a contractual obligation in Johnson’s résumé than a desire to create another Benoit Blanc mystery that offers something new to the audience. Hopefully this will be Johnson’s first and only misstep in an otherwise incredible streak of films. It had to happen eventually, I guess, but it’s also sad to see one of our most treasured screenwriters on autopilot, subverting our expectations by making something painfully mediocre instead of the masterpieces he’s usually known for…
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