“No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins,” Jesus tells his disciples, according to Mark 2:22. That teaching of Jesus doesn’t make its way into Wake Up Dead Man, the latest of director Rian Johnson‘s Knives Out mysteries starring Daniel Craig as Southern-fried detective Benoit Blanc. Several other teachings do appear in the movie, which brings Blanc to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude after the murder of its domineering priest Monsignor Wicks. In other words, poor Blanc must deal with all manner of church folk.Despite its absence, Jesus’ teaching from Mark 2 might be the most relevant to Wake Up Dead Man. Because for his third outing in cinematic sleuthing, Johnson tries to pour something different and substantive into the franchise. Unfortunately, this new wine doesn’t always sit well within the wineskins of the established Knives Out model, sometimes stretching the seams for unsatisfying results.cnx.cmd.push(function() {cnx({playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530",}).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796");});On a plot level, Wake Up Dead Man sure feels like a standard Knives Out adventure. Craig returns as Blanc, looking all the nattier for the long locks he now sports, and inserts himself in another insular community of big personalities. Biggest of all is the Monsignor, played by a glowering Josh Brolin with his own wild mane. The son of a wayward woman he refers to only as the “Whore Harlot” (Annie Hamilton), Wicks inherited his position at Perpetual Fortitude from his grandfather and uses it to fight a fierce battle against what he sees as the encroaching threat of loose morals and general secularism.Aiding the Monsignor’s fight is the close coterie he’s assembled around him. There’s the newly-divorced wife-guy Dr. Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), a sci-fi writer turned religious acolyte Lee Ross (Andrew Scott), a disabled cellist hoping for a miracle cure Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny), dutiful lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington), and the younger brother she was forced to raise, would-be conservative grifter Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack). Of all these, none support the monsignor and his mission more than officious administrator Martha (Glenn Close), who gets help from the groundskeeper who adores her, Samson (Thomas Haden Church).Blanc arrives in the Perpetual Fortitude community after Monsignor Wicks gets stabbed to death midway through his Good Friday service, brought in by local police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis). He’s more than willing to consider each of the acolytes a suspect, but they all point the finger at Perpetual Fortitude’s newly-installed associate priest Reverend Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor).A former boxer who joined the priesthood after a horrific incident in the ring, Jud is fundamentally a fighter. But because he fights with the church for more love and acceptance in the Church, he feels conflicted. “We need less of this,” he says throughout the film, putting up his dukes as if about to punch; “and more of this,” he adds, spreading his arms to mimic Christ on the cross. But when faced with a belligerent like Wicks, he knows how to throw a jab.Were Wake Up Dead Man to unfold its plot in the manner described above, it would play out more or less like the previous Knives Out stories, the 2019 original film and its 2022 sequel Glass Onion. But instead the movie begins with Jud, who narrates the story of his coming to Perpetual Fortitude and the events leading up to the monsignor’s death. Blanc doesn’t arrive until 30 minutes into this 140-minute film, making it feel more like an episode of Columbo or Johnson’s recently canceled Peacock series, Poker Face.The shift makes Blanc a supporting character in Jud’s story, a point underscored by his discomfort with the religious setting. Although he introduces himself to Jud as a man who “worships on the altar of rationality,” and quickly unleashes a homily citing the many misdeeds of the church, he cannot be help but won over by the young priest, who listens and accepts the critique while explaining his own faith in non-condemning ways. Blanc never gives up his skepticism nor Jud his belief, but the two respect one another’s means for being decent human beings.Admirable as this understanding certainly is, it diminishes the tension of the narrative. Not only does Blanc have no character arc in Wake Up Dead Man, but even the central mystery gets les attention than Jud’s internal conflict. Whereas previous Knives Out movies gave their oddballs plenty of screen time, here the side characters get only the barest of plots and are reduced to a handful of glances and lines. The young Spaeny has already developed enough screen presence to suggest depth with a single stare, but Renner and Scott feel wasted in their one-note characters.One also feels Johnson’s disinterest in the mystery elements with the film’s construction. Handsomely shot by cinematographer Steve Yedlin, Wake Up Dead Man has several striking images. The motif of a light shining on an empty church wall where a cross used to be resonates each time, and Johnson occasionally allows the visuals to get surreal as they match the spiritual subject matter. But the movie lacks the tight sense of geography enjoyed by the other Blanc mysteries. Those films largely took place in a single house, but Wake Up Dead Man encompasses the entire church grounds, and Johnson doesn’t always delineate the relationship between certain spaces. As a result, it’s not always clear how places and events connect to one another, a problem for viewers who want to follow Blanc’s lines of logic.Still, it’s hard to hate what Johnson does put on the screen. By this point, Craig has so fully developed Blanc that he makes his presence known even in a diminished role and he makes the most of every opportunity to do a goofy pratfall or deliver an idiosyncratic observation. Likewise, Johnson gets maximum effect from O’Connor’s face, turning the same beaming boyish smile that made his character in Challengers such a convincing grifter into a countenance that radiates with kindness.Is a sincere call for Christian charity what people want from a Benoit Blanc mystery? The answer to that question depends on your response to a moment midway through the film when Jud phones a parishioner to get a key piece of information. If you are moved by Jud’s decision to ignore the mystery to comfort the grieving woman, then you’ll love the way Wake Up Dead Man has matured the series. But if you, like Blanc, get annoyed that mystery has been subordinated to religious devotion, then you’ll feel that Johnson has broken his own franchise.Wake Up Dead Man streams on Netflix on Dec. 12, 2025. The post Wake Up Dead Man Review: Rian Johnson Mystery Loses Knives Out Edge with Serious Turn appeared first on Den of Geek.