The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 6, 2025, and was released in select theaters on November 26, before streaming on Netflix on December 12. Like its predecessors, it received generally positive reviews, with most praise for the performances, in particular of Craig and O'Connor.
Plot
Jud Duplenticy, a former boxer turned Catholic priest, is reassigned after punching a rude deacon. He is made assistant pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, a rural parish in upstate New York led by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks. Wicks is the grandson of Reverend Prentice Wicks, who forced Jefferson's mother, Grace, to remain at the church with the promise of receiving his inheritance, only for the fortune to disappear after his death; Grace angrily vandalized the church and destroyed its crucifix, which the younger Wicks refuses to replace. Jud comes into conflict with Wicks over his incendiary preaching, which has driven away all but his most loyal parishioners. During a Good Friday service, Wicks dies in a storage closet near the pulpit, stabbed in the back with a knife fashioned from a devil's-head lamp adornment that Jud had drunkenly stolen from a bar and thrown through a church window. Though the evidence is inconclusive, suspicion falls on Jud.
Police chief Geraldine Scott summons private detective Benoit Blanc to investigate. He recruits Jud to assist him, assured of his innocence. After Wicks' burial in Prentice's mausoleum, Jud and Blanc question the congregation, learning Wicks abruptly disavowed his followers at a meeting just before his death. Failed politician Cy Draven reveals Wicks allegedly found Prentice's fortune and was planning to use it to pursue a career in politics with Cy, his illegitimate son. After giving counsel to a construction company's receptionist over the phone, Jud drops out of the investigation, feeling Blanc's dogged pursuit of justice is counter to his practice of forgiveness and empathy.
While returning to his rectory at night, Jud appears to witness Wicks exit the mausoleum and embrace groundskeeper Samson. He is knocked out pursuing them and wakes up next to Samson's corpse. Blanc stops Jud from turning himself in; they go to parish member Nat's house and find his corpse dissolving in a tub of acid alongside Wicks' body. The following morning, the police and the congregation convene in the church for Jud's confession, only for Blanc to explain how Nat killed Wicks: he spiked Wicks' private flask with tranquilizer and, using a second devil's-head lamp adornment from the bar, attached one to Wicks' vestment to implicate Jud, covertly switching it out while pretending to examine the body and stabbing Wicks with the knife made from the other. Midway through his summation, however, Blanc has an epiphany and abruptly declares he cannot explain Wicks' resurrection, and the congregation leaves.
Blanc explains to Geraldine and Jud he realized he had to follow Jud's example and offer grace to the killer by letting them come forward on their own. Martha, the church's longtime secretary, returns to confess: Prentice killed himself by swallowing his fortune in the form of a valuable diamond, which Grace was seeking when she ransacked the parish. Martha kept the diamond secret until Jud challenged her to confess her deepest sin to Wicks, but she soon realized he then began plotting to retrieve the diamond from Prentice's corpse. To stop Wicks, she plotted his murder with Nat, persuaded Samson to be entombed in Wicks' place to retrieve the diamond, and had the two stage Wicks' resurrection to restore faith in the church while planning to destroy the diamond afterwards. Nat killed Samson to keep the gem for himself, framing Jud in the process, but Martha tricked him into consuming a cup of coffee he had poisoned and intended for her. After revealing this, she collapses, having now taken the remainder of the poison, which Blanc had realized during his denouement. With her last breaths, she prays for forgiveness from all victims including, at Jud's urging, Grace. Jud performs absolution before she dies, and she drops the diamond.
One year later, Jud is about to reopen the church, now renamed Our Lady of Perpetual Grace. Most of the former parishioners have moved on with their lives. Though Jud and Blanc express ignorance of the jewel's location, a disgruntled Cy says he will closely monitor Jud for financial evidence of his having sold it. As new parishioners enter for Jud's first Mass, the diamond is seen lying within the chest of the church's new crucifix that Jud had made by hand.
Before the release of Knives Out (2019), Rian Johnson said he would like to create sequels with Benoit Blanc investigating further mysteries, and already had an idea for a new film.[6] On March 31, 2021, it was reported that Netflix bought the rights to two Knives Out sequels for over $400million.[7]
Influences
Johnson said his key influences were works of Edgar Allan Poe and John Dickson Carr, as well as elements of works of Agatha Christie, especially her novel And Then There Were None (1939).[8] Carr's The Hollow Man (1935) is repeatedly referenced within the film.[9] The coloring scheme one of the flashback scenes in the beginning of the film depicting Grace Wicks was influenced by Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992).[10] Johnson also drew from his own religious upbringing in Evangelicalism, with the atheist Blanc reflecting his feelings on organized religion. However, he chose to have the film focus on Catholicism for aesthetic reasons, saying the churches he grew up in "kind of looked like Pottery Barns" and would therefore serve as a poor visual basis for the film.[11]
Writing
In June 2022, Johnson revealed Knives Out 3 was a working title with his intent being each film has a distinct title, citing the works of Agatha Christie as his inspiration for the films and the individual titles.[12] In November 2022, Johnson said he was preparing to work on writing the third film.[13] By January 2023, Johnson confirmed he had started writing the script for the third film, stating it will be tonally and thematically different from the previous installments.[14] Johnson later stated though he had approved the subtitle of A Knives Out Mystery for the previous installment, he would like to rename the series and add A Benoit Blanc Mystery as subtitles to future installments.[15]
In October 2023, following the resolution of the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike, Johnson announced he had started working on the script for the third film. The filmmaker stated he had the premise planned, and could begin writing again.[16] The film's title Wake Up Dead Man comes from a phrase in the folk song "Ain't No More Cane on the Brazos", though Johnson notes that it is also "kind of" derived from the title of the song of the same name by U2.[17][18][19]
The end credits of the film feature a series of portraits of the main characters, for which the cast posed in costume for English painter Isabella Watling.[33]
Filming
Church of the Holy Innocents
As with the previous two films, Steve Yedlin and Nathan Johnson returned as cinematographer and composer, respectively.[34][35]Principal photography began on June 10, 2024, in London.[22][36][37] First-look photos from the set revealed Craig's character, Benoit Blanc, with a noticeably different, longer hairstyle than in previous films.[38] On June 19, 2024, Close revealed she was "really hit hard" with both COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which was also revealed to have resulted in her being able to only participate in two days of filming by that point in time.[39][40] Filming was completed on August 17.[41]
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 92% of 314 critics' reviews are positive.The website's consensus reads: "Giving Benoit Blanc a worthy mystery with its genuinely soulful fixation on faith and a scene-stealing Josh O'Connor performance, Wake Up Dead Man is another Knives Out puzzle that comes together splendidly."[50]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 80 out of 100, based on 59 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[51]
Damon Wise for Deadline wrote that the film "may be the best one yet" in the Knives Out franchise due to its more introspective nature.[52] On the German arthouse portal Programmkino.de, Dieter Oßwald wrote: "this sequel also offers everything a Knives-coup needs: perfectly quirky characters, superb tension, witty twists, star power, and a brilliant Daniel Craig with a screen presence that exudes effortless cool."[53] Alissa Wilkinson of The New York Times wrote that what makes the film work is that "Father Jud and Benoit Blanc are two peas in a pod, when it comes right down to brass tacks."[54]
Some reviewers responded to the movie’s use of Catholicism with enthusiasm,[55] while others found aspects unbelievable.[56]
In September 2022, Johnson confirmed his intention to make more films in the series.[67] Later that month, Craig and Johnson separately said they would continue making further films, as long as they were both involved.[68] In October 2025, Johnson stated that he had nothing planned for a fourth film in the series, though he did express a willingness to make another film as long as he and Craig have fun doing them and audiences enjoy them. He said he finds them challenging to make, especially in terms of developing new plots.[69]
On November 18, 2025, it was announced that Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig were "starting to formulate ideas" for a potential fourth Knives Out movie.[70]
Notes
↑Segan, one of Johnson's main collaborators, previously appeared in Knives Out (2019) as Trooper Wagner and Glass Onion (2022) as Derol.
↑Gordon-Levitt, one of Johnson's main collaborators, previously had voice cameos in Knives Out as Detective Hardrock and in Glass Onion as the Hourly Dong.
↑Sylt, Chris; Reid, Caroline (October 29, 2025). "UK paid $41M to shoot new 'Knives Out' Netflix movie in London instead of New York". New York Post. Archived from the original on December 16, 2025. Retrieved December 7, 2025. Britain's blockbuster incentives slashed the total bill for Netflix's "Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery" to $151.7 million, according to filings with the British companies register. That's versus a total tab of $192.7 million – an outsize figure even by Hollywood standards which nevertheless was "in line with the production budget," according to the filings.
↑Josh O'Connor, Kerry Washington, Glenn Close and Josh Brolin and Rian Johnson talk "Knives Out". Variety Events. Toronto: YouTube. Retrieved December 3, 2025. I more know that phrase from this—I think it's originally a folk song that Pete Seeger heard from Lead Belly; I heard the recording of Pete Seeger doing it. And there's a phrase in this song, 'Wake up, dead man', so that's why it was originally in my head.
↑Fügmann, Lina (October 14, 2025). "Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery". Programmkino (in German). Retrieved October 19, 2025. diese Fortsetzung bietet alles, was ein "Knives"-Coup braucht. Vollendet schräge Figuren. Superbe Spannung. Witzige Wendungen. Star-Auftrieb. Sowie einen grandiosen Daniel Craig mit leinwandpräsenter Lässigkeit.
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