In the frost-kissed hollows of upstate New York, where steeples pierce the perpetual gray like accusatory fingers, Netflix has summoned its most audacious exorcism yet: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. The third chapter in Rian Johnson’s razor-edged whodunit trilogy dropped its theatrical veil on November 26, 2025, before unleashing its full fury on the streamer December 12—a date now etched in the calendars of mystery obsessives worldwide. But even before the altar bells tolled for its premiere, early screenings at festivals like Toronto and London had the cognoscenti whispering heresy: This isn’t just another Blanc bonbon; it’s a black-veiled requiem that skewers faith’s fragility with the precision of a stiletto through a chalice. Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc returns, not as the puckish parlor sleuth of yore, but a world-weary inquisitor grappling with his own atheism amid a locked-room slaughter that defies divine logic. Flanked by Josh O’Connor’s soul-tormented priest and Glenn Close’s serpentine dowager, the film has critics crowning it “bigger than Sherlock, darker than True Detective,” while fans convulse in online cathedrals of speculation. The opening murder? A gut-wrenching desecration that leaves viewers gasping into their popcorn, demanding: In a house of God, who plays the devil?

For the uninitiated—or those still nursing hangovers from Glass Onion‘s tropical farce—Johnson’s Knives Out saga is less a series than a shape-shifting sacrament, each installment a fresh chalice of poison-laced communion wine. The 2019 original, a sleeper hit that grossed $312 million on a $40 million budget, transplanted Agatha Christie’s country house puzzle to a Thrombey family pile, where Blanc unraveled a patriarch’s “suicide” amid heirs squabbling like hyenas over a fresh kill. Its 2022 sequel, Glass Onion, jetted to a billionaire’s Aegean idyll, lampooning tech bros with cameos from the likes of Janelle Monáe and Edward Norton. But Wake Up Dead Man—titled after U2’s brooding 1997 dirge—sheds the sun-drenched satire for Gothic gloom, channeling Edgar Allan Poe’s locked-room riddles and John Dickson Carr’s impossible crimes. “This is Blanc’s most personal odyssey,” Johnson confided post-TIFF premiere, his voice laced with the fatigue of a scribe who’d wrestled this “hardest script yet” through the 2023 strikes. “It’s about belief—not just in God, but in people, in redemption. And how easily both curdle.”

The plot unfurls in the insular hamlet of Eldritch Falls, a faded Catholic enclave where the air reeks of incense and unspoken sins. Enter Rev. Jud Duplenticy (O’Connor), a doe-eyed novice priest fresh from seminary scandals, dispatched to aid the parish’s firebrand leader, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Andrew Scott, all velvet menace and veiled zeal). Jud’s arrival is no mere clerical shuffle; it’s a powder keg in a powder room. The monsignor, a charismatic televangelist whose sermons blend brimstone with blockchain tithes, presides over St. Agnes Cathedral—a labyrinth of vaulted arches, shadowed confesssionals, and a crypt that whispers of 19th-century witch hunts. The ensemble orbits this unholy trinity like moths to a black flame: Wicks’ iron-fisted sister Martha (Close), the diocesan dragon clutching the purse strings with talons dipped in holy water; Police Chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis), a no-nonsense skeptic whose badge chafes against the cloth; her grizzled deputy Harlan Crowe (Josh Brolin), a lapsed altar boy nursing grudges older than his liver spots; and a carousel of suspects including Wicks’ ambitious niece Eliza (Cailee Spaeny), a TikTok-touting influencer peddling “miracle” relics; the monsignor’s shadowy consigliere, Father Elias (Jeremy Renner), whose vows of poverty ring hollow amid offshore accounts; and the parish’s enigmatic groundskeeper, Brother Theo (Daryl McCormack), whose herbal remedies blur the line between healer and hexer. Lurking in the wings: Kerry Washington as a crusading journalist sniffing diocesan corruption, and Thomas Haden Church as the bumbling bishop whose “oversight” is anything but.

The inciting incident erupts mid-Mass on All Saints’ Eve, a tableau of flickering votives and murmured litanies. As the congregation kneels in shadowed pews, Wicks ascends the pulpit for his signature fire-and-brimstone homily—only to convulse, foam at the mouth, and crumple dead before the crucifix, his eyes frozen in a rictus of rapture or rage. The cathedral’s ancient oak doors, bolted from within with a medieval hasp, seal the crime scene like a sarcophagus. No weapons, no exits, no witnesses beyond the faithful flock—many of whom swear they heard celestial choirs, not choking gasps. Enter Benoit Blanc (Craig), summoned by Chief Scott after local fumblings yield zilch. The detective arrives not in seersucker splendor but a wool greatcoat dusted with Manhattan sleet, his Southern drawl now tempered by a world-weariness that hints at midlife reckonings. “Faith is the ultimate locked room, darlin’,” he drawls to Jud over bourbon in the rectory, his eyes—those piercing aquamarines—probing the priest’s collar for cracks. “You can’t see inside, but the devil’s always got a key.”

What follows is a 128-minute maelstrom of misdirection, laced with Johnson’s trademark barbs at institutional rot. The investigation spirals through confessional tapes laced with lurid admissions (Eliza’s affair with a donor; Harlan’s embezzlement from the poor box); a desecrated reliquary spilling “miracle” water that’s suspiciously spiked with antifreeze; and midnight vigils where parishioners clutch rosaries like life rafts. Blanc’s atheism clashes gloriously with Jud’s fervent doubt—O’Connor, 35 and riding high off Challengers‘ brooding intensity, imbues the cleric with a haunted luminosity, his wide-set eyes flickering between piety and panic. Is Jud the redeemer or the fall guy, his past seminary expulsion (a hushed-up liaison?) the serpent in the garden? Close, 78 and feral as ever, devours her Martha with Oscar-bait gusto: a widow whose “devotion” funds Wicks’ empire via laundered art deals, her glacial smiles concealing a venom that could curdle sacramental wine. “God forgives everything, Benoit,” she hisses in a candlelit interrogation, her voice a scalpel. “Except loose ends.” Kunis grounds the frenzy as Geraldine, her chief a whirlwind of procedural fury and maternal steel, while Brolin’s Harlan broods like a bull in a china chapel, his barbs at “Bible-thumpers” masking a soul adrift.

Craig, 57 and post-Bond burnish intact, elevates Blanc from gadfly to grappler with the void. Gone is the Looney Tunes lilt; this Blanc is bruised, his quips now edged with existential ache—”Murder’s just God’s way of editing the script”—as he bonds with Jud over shared orphanhoods. Their chemistry crackles: mentor-protégé turned confessor-penitent, culminating in a rain-lashed crypt confrontation where faith’s illusions shatter like stained glass. Johnson, directing with the fervor of a convert, films it all in chiaroscuro splendor—shot in England’s chilblained countryside subbing for New York’s Hudson Valley, with cinematographer Matthew Jensen (Glass Onion) bathing cathedrals in pools of amber light that bleed into inky black. The score, a brooding requiem by Nathan Johnson (Rian’s cousin), weaves Gregorian chants with dissonant strings, swelling to a crescendo that mirrors the plot’s theological twists: Was Wicks poisoned by communion wafers? A cursed thurible? Or the collective venom of a flock turned feral?

The first act’s cliffhanger—a spectral figure glimpsed in the belfry, tolling bells like a dirge—has weaponized word-of-mouth. Festival crowds at TIFF erupted in gasps, the Toronto Star chronicling “audible heart attacks” mid-screening. Online, X (formerly Twitter) is a digital rosary of reactions: #WakeUpDeadMan trended globally within hours of embargo lift, amassing 1.2 million mentions by November 18. “Episode 1? More like Exorcist-level gut punch—O’Connor’s eyes alone deserve a halo,” one user raved, while another confessed, “Blanc’s drawl in that confessional? I need therapy. Darker than True Detective S1, twistier than Luther.” Fan theories swarm like locusts: Is Martha’s antique rosary the murder weapon, laced with ricin? Does Jud’s “miraculous” healing touch hide a hemopath’s secret? Memes proliferate—Craig’s Blanc photoshopped into The Da Vinci Code, captioned “Sherlock who? This is next-level heresy.” Purists nitpick the “preachiness,” one X skeptic griping, “Too much God-talk, not enough gore,” but the choir drowns them: “Addictive AF—bigger than Sherlock, with Close as the ultimate serpent.”

Critics, too, genuflect. Rotten Tomatoes clocks 92% fresh from 150 reviews, the consensus saluting its “soulful fixation on faith and O’Connor’s scene-stealing gravitas.” The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw awarded four stars: “Murderously good fun, a whodunnit that wakes the genre from its crypt.” Variety hailed Craig’s “re-energized” turn, while IndieWire pondered if it’s Johnson’s “darkest hour—or holiest.” Metacritic’s 82/100 underscores “universal acclaim,” though some chide the “set-bound artifice” from UK shoots. Box office whispers? The limited theatrical run—expanding to 1,200 screens—has already notched $15 million domestic opening weekend, per early trackers, outpacing Glass Onion‘s $15.3 million.

Behind the velvet rope, production was a passion play. Johnson, 53, inked his Netflix pact in 2019 for $450 million across two sequels, but Wake Up Dead Man gestated amid strikes and script sweats. “I wanted Poe’s impossibility, Carr’s impossibility, but with heart,” he told Tudum, crediting inspirations from The Name of the Rose and real diocesan scandals. Casting Blanc’s foil in O’Connor was kismet—the God’s Own Country breakout, fresh from The Crown‘s princely pathos, auditioned with a mock confessional that left Johnson “haunted.” Close, lured from retirement, channeled her Dangerous Liaisons venom into Martha, ad-libbing barbs that drew blood on set. Filming wrapped June 2024 in Hertfordshire’s Gothic manors, with reshoots for a “jaw-dropping” VFX sequence involving a “miraculous” levitation gone awry. Ram Bergman produced, ensuring the $100 million budget (up 25% from Onion) funded lavish period flashbacks to the parish’s founding amid 1840s revivalist frenzy.

Yet amid the rapture, shadows stir. Is this the franchise’s zenith or swan song? Johnson eyes “forever” Blanc tales, teasing a fourth as “Blanc unmoored in the machine age.” Netflix, eyeing 200 million hours streamed in week one, courts IMAX re-releases. Fans petition for spin-offs: Blanc & Jud: Absolution Road Trip? As the credits roll on a gut-punch reveal—spoiler-free: it ties every thread in a Gordian knot of grace and grudge—Blanc tips his hat to the lens: “Belief’s a gamble, y’all. House always wins… unless you’re me.” In a streaming wilderness of reboots and retreads, Wake Up Dead Man isn’t resurrection; it’s revelation. Netflix’s next obsession? Amen to that. But heed the warning: Once you kneel to this mystery, absolution may never come.