Film Review - Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025)

Wake Up Dead Man is the third Knives Out movie and the second released under Netflix and once again sees Daniel Craig play Benoit Blanc as he investigates the murder of a Monsignor (Josh Brolin) in a church and there are a lot of suspects (Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Thomas Haden Church, Cailee Spaeny, Jeremy Renner among others)

Wake Up Dead Man is a better movie than Glass Onion (the second movie in the series) but it still falls short of the fun and freshness of the original film from 2019 but before I go more into that I want to mention the positives and first of those is Daniel Craig who is as good as ever in this role and as fun as ever, watching him here always puts a smile on my face and part of me prefers him in this role than as James Bond and he was a great 007.

Secondly the film is well crafted and deserves to be seen in a cinema, Steve Yedlin (director Rian Johnson’s regular cinematographer) does a great job here and I fear his DP work will be ruined when people watch this on Netflix heavily compressed and in fluctuating quality as there is a lot of dark shadows, moody lighting and interesting colour choices that are seen at their best when watching this movie on the big screen, the Production Design by Rick Heinrichs is also quite good with the gothic looking church and isolating forest areas around it.

And the mystery here (again written by Johnson) is better than it was in Glass Onion as well as it feels more interesting and less comedic than it did in the second film as well as less on the nose than it was last time.

But where this movie does fall down is in the broader ensemble cast as like in Glass Onion their not as fun to watch as it was in the first film, Renner/Close/Brolin/Haden Church are all fine but have been both better and worse elsewhere, Cailee Spaeny who is a great young talent feels the most wasted as her role is so minor it didn’t really need someone like her in that role while Josh O’Connor fares the best out of the group and feels like a co-lead at times but he holds his own very well but then again he rarely lets you down as an actor.

And lastly I really sincerely hope that this is the final Knives Out film made by Netflix as I don’t feel this partnership has done Johnson or the franchise any good I’m afraid, now don’t get me wrong I fully understand why Lionsgate made the decision they did to sell the sequels to them in 2021, it was the height of Covid and they just had Chaos Walking come out and lose a whole bunch of money and Netflix came along with a big enough cheque to give them some easy money.

But that cost in hindsight has proven to be a costly one as when the first film was made under Lionsgate it was a better movie primarily because Johnson was dealing with people in the studio system who knew how to do this stuff and do it properly whereas at Netflix they were most likely adopting the Dick Jones mindset of “It’s Just Content, who cares if it worked or not” and didn’t give Johnson the guidance he probably needed and probably got at Lionsgate so hopefully he goes back to a traditional studio for future movies.

And so that was Wake Up Dead Man and this Knives Out is better than Glass Onion but not as good as the first film but its still enjoyable nonetheless, 3 out of 5.