In 2019, Oscar nominated writer-director Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig revitalized the British drawing room murder mystery with the gleeful, star-laden KNIVES OUT, creating their own version of Agatha Christie’s unflappable detective Hercule Poirot with Craig’s brilliant Southerner, Benoit Blanc. The follow-up, GLASS ONION, focused on a tech-bro billionaire, ratcheting up the humour and evoking Herbert Ross’ cult classic THE LAST OF SHEILA. This time, Johnson riffs on the dark, gothic elements of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue — a seemingly impossible locked-room scenario involving a corpse — while still incorporating many of the series’ signature elements. Set in a small town and focusing on its local church, WAKE UP DEAD MAN is packed with stars, including Josh O’Connor as a the younger cleric to Josh Brolin’s autocratic, abrasive priest, Glenn Close as his right-hand person, plus Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Jeremy Renner (whose likeness had a memorable appearance in Glass Onion), and Mila Kunis as a local cop who is as determined as Blanc to solve this seemingly insoluble case. And there’s a murder that presents itself as an impossible crime. All that and Craig delivers perhaps his best Blanc yet. The latest entry in one of the most successful mystery series in recent film history is as strong, inventive, and entertaining as ever.
“Everyone seems to be having a blast, and the filmmaker knows how to take both the ensemble he’s assembled and his congregation of KNIVES OUT fans — call us Blanc-heads — to church, literally and figuratively.” —David Fear, Rolling Stone
