Rian Johnson didn’t have to go this hard for the third Knives Out film, but here we are. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is not just a great entry to the franchise; it’s a rare film that lets a murder mystery sit in the same room as sincerity, doubt, anger, and grace without flinching. It’s also the installment that finally makes explicit something Johnson has been nudging at since Knives Out: Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) isn’t just a detective. He’s the modern heir to Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, but with a bigger, warmer, fuzzier heart.
Blanc still brings the deductive fireworks, but here that’s almost secondary to the film’s emotional architecture. By stepping back and letting Father Jud (Josh O’Connor) stand at the center, Johnson shows that the best mysteries aren’t only about who did it, but what kind of world allows it to happen.
The Louise Scene: The Moment the Film Reveals Its Soul
There’s a moment — quiet, gentle, and almost radical in its simplicity — where Father Jud stops the investigation to answer a phone call. On the other end is Louise, a stranger whose mother is in the hospital. The call isn’t important for the plot, and under a less thoughtful writer, it would have served as a simple vehicle for exposition.
But Johnson refuses that shortcut.
Jud listens. He prays with her. He pauses the machinery of a murder mystery because someone, somewhere, needs comfort more urgently than he needs an alibi.
This is the scene that cracked the film wide open for me. In a genre built on deceit, paranoia, and stunning reveals, Wake Up Dead Man chooses — almost stubbornly — to show what compassion looks like under pressure. Josh O’Connor plays the moment with such aching sincerity that it becomes instantly clear why Johnson trusted him to carry the film’s emotional gravity.
This is also where Blanc’s own heart becomes visible through the cracks. He stops pushing. He listens. He lets Jud be the kind of priest he wishes more people could encounter in real life. Their partnership shifts from “detective + suspect” to a quiet duet between two men trying to hold onto decency in a world designed to test it.
Benoit Blanc: Our Modern Sherlock/Poirot — But Human
Holmes had brilliance. Poirot had flair. Blanc has both, but he also has vulnerability, intuition shaped by empathy, and an almost pastoral instinct to understand rather than simply expose.
Across the trilogy, Blanc’s genius is never just a parlor trick. It’s tied to how he perceives people and how he refuses to flatten anyone into a clue. Johnson has been building this portrait film by film.
- With Marta, Blanc saw honesty in a world built to reward deception.
- With Helen, he matched her grief with clarity and respect.
- With Jud, he listens — truly listens — to someone whose worldview differs from his, not to win the argument but to understand the man.
Blanc’s humanity is what makes him feel modern. If Sherlock is razor intellect and Poirot is meticulous moral order, Blanc is the detective built for 2025: intelligent, principled, but more importantly — kind, curious, and unafraid of emotional truth.
The Trilogy’s Goodness Anchors: Marta, Helen, Jud
One through-line of the Knives Out films, and perhaps the one that makes the series unexpectedly comforting, is Johnson’s insistence on giving us protagonists who are genuinely good.
- Marta: compassionate to the point of trembling, the moral heartbeat of the first film.
- Helen: furious, grieving, and the emotional powerhouse of the second.
- Jud: earnest, wounded, and holding onto the idea that compassion still matters in a world infected by cruelty.
These characters aren’t saints. They’re complex, stubborn, sometimes scared. But Johnson never mocks their goodness. He protects it. He lets them be the counterweight to systems built on ego and spectacle.
Jud, in particular, is a revelation. He isn’t naïve — his temper simmers, his doubts feel lived-in — but his tenderness refuses to die. Watching him navigate suspicion, spiritual crisis, and the suffocating politics of a broken parish makes Wake Up Dead Man feel like the most intimate film in the trilogy.
O’Connor ensures that.
Josh O’Connor: One of the Best Actors Working Today
This film doesn’t work without Josh O’Connor anchoring it.
Period.
He plays Father Jud with a kind of interior precision that’s almost painful to watch — sincerity without sentimentality, vulnerability without collapse. Every flicker of temper, every quiet swallow of pride, every breath before he speaks to a hurting parishioner is measured but never mechanical.
O’Connor has become one of those actors who disappears into roles not by erasing himself, but by revealing parts of humanity we rarely see onscreen. If The Crown showed his capacity for tragedy and Challengers showcased his chaos, Wake Up Dead Man is the performance that proves he can carry moral weight — heavy, unglamorous, and deeply moving.
Simply put:
this is one of the best performances of 2025.
Why This Might Be (one of) 2025’s Best Film
Because it doesn’t chase cleverness for its own sake.
Because it understands that a mystery isn’t only about uncovering the truth, but what the truth reveals about us.
Because instead of leaning into spectacle like Glass Onion, Johnson returns to something quieter, more grounded, and ultimately more affecting: a community shaped by fear, a priest trying to hold onto kindness, and a detective who recognises goodness when he sees it.
The film asks:
- What happens to a place when fear becomes its organising principle?
- What does grace look like when the room is already on fire?
- And can two people — one of faith, one of reason — still talk to each other without turning every disagreement into war?
Johnson doesn’t offer neat answers. He offers characters who try, fail, and try again. And in a year full of noise, that feels strangely radical.
Closing Thoughts
Wake Up Dead Man works as a mystery, but its real strength lies in how it treats people. It refuses to flatten them into plot devices even when the genre would allow it. The film respects sincerity, even while acknowledging its limits.
Three films in, Johnson finds a new angle for the series. Not through bigger twists, but through a steadier emotional truth. It’s a story about harm, yes, but also about the small, stubborn acts of care that survive in the middle of it.
And that, ultimately, is what makes it linger.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Eugene Chystiakov On Unsplash
