Daniel Craig is back as Southern sleuth Benoit Blanc in the latest Knives Out whodunit
Back in 2019, moviegoers were introduced to Benoit Blanc, a legendary detective hired to investigate the death of bestselling author Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) in Knives Out. His skills were again called upon in the 2021 sequel, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, when he investigated a bizarre case involving tech billionaire Miles Bron (Edward Norton).
Erstwhile 007 Daniel Craig is back to reprise Blanc for a third time in Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.
This time, Blanc journeys to a small church in upstate New York to investigate a murder that defies all logic. “This film charts [Blanc’s] most personal journey yet,” director Rian Johnson tells Netflix’s Tudum. “He’s forced to engage with the case — and with himself — in a way that’s completely new.”
Blanc is sent to a small town, where eager young clergyman Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) had recently arrived, assigned to assist the local priest, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin). Wicks, described as a “charismatic firebrand,” servicing a group of parishioners including Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church), Vera Draven (Kerry Washington), Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), Lee Ross (Andrew Scott) and Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny).
When the townsfolk are left reeling by a seemingly impossible murder within the church, the local police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis) enlists Blanc to unravel a mystery that cannot be explained; as Blanc puts it, “This was dressed as a miracle, it’s just a murder. And I solve murders.”
In Wake Up Dead Man, Johnson drew inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, infusing dark gothic elements into the action, while taking some pretty big thematic swings. “Themes of guilt, mystery, morality, and fallible humanity all feel right at home in a church, with a man of God in the centre of the mix,” Johnson explains. “I have strong feelings about faith: both my own personal experience and how it intersects with our country’s cultural and civic life, and the ways that intersection touches all of us differently. So it felt like rich ground for a good story.”
According to Johnson, the third film in his comedy-mystery franchise hews closer to the first film than its sequel. “It’s more similar to the first Knives Out in that it gets back to the real origins of the genre, which predate Agatha Christie, going back to Edgar Allan Poe,” Johnson says. “It’s still a Benoit Blanc mystery, so it’s funny and fun, but it’s set in an old stone church, there are lots of graveyards.”
Craig, marking his third time out as Blanc, was immediately drawn in by the devious, twist-filled plot that Johnson concocted. “What Rian’s movies do best is subvert the genre,” Craig said. “You start off thinking you’re watching an old-fashioned sort of Agatha Christie-type mystery — but then it shifts, and you realize you’re watching something entirely different.”
Once again, Johnson has assembled a murderer’s row of top acting talent for the film’s ensemble cast. “We’ve been very lucky with each of these movies to have gathered some of my favourite actors on the planet, and that’s absolutely the case here,” Johnson told Tudum. “They’re also all lovely folks who get along, which is the dinner party aspect of it. When you’re making an ensemble movie like this, I think that’s key.”
As former Scandal star Washington told The Wrap, she signed on for Wake Up Dead Man sight unseen, without any knowledge of the character she’d be playing. “I was like, ‘Sign me up,’ and [Johnson] was like, ‘Don’t you want to know the character?’ I don’t care. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out,” Washington said. “He’s like, ‘You should probably read the script.’ So I read the script, and then I went, ‘Wow, I really need to read it one more time. It’s shockingly complicated.’”
“Once he starts, he’s like a dog with a bone — he works it and works it and works it until he gets it right,” Craig told Empire, revealing he read the script as soon as he received it — and then, like Washington, immediately read it again. “It’s like watching the movies — it’s always great to watch it a second time, because there are always bits you miss,” said Craig of the script, which blends a murder mystery with themes of religious faith. “That’s the real reason the script was so hard to write,” added Johnson. “It’s something I do take really seriously. I wanted to explore it in a really honest way, while also not being facile about it, or — God forbid — moralistic or irreverent.”
As fans will recall, Jeremy Renner’s “Renning Hot habanero chili pepper sauce” was a running gag in Glass Onion, but Wake Up Dead Man features the man himself, playing parishioner Dr. Nat Sharp. “Jeremy’s a great actor who I’ve wanted to work with for a long time,” Johnson told Tudum. “I was very relieved he thought the hot sauce thing was funny! He’s playing a proper part in this one, we’ll keep the sauce offscreen. Maybe we’ll sneak a few bottles onto the catering table.”
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, streaming Friday, December 12 on Netflix