LOS ANGELES — “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” has brought Daniel Craig’s detective Benoit Blanc back in a darker case that opened in select theaters Nov. 26, 2025, and began streaming on Netflix Dec. 12, 2025. Writer-director Rian Johnson leans into a gothic mood, pairing Blanc with a young priest played by Josh O’Connor as the death of a monsignor (Josh Brolin) pulls Glenn Close into the circle of suspicion, Dec. 18, 2025.
‘Wake Up Dead Man’ pushes Benoit Blanc into a faith-soaked locked-room mystery
At its core, the third Benoit Blanc mystery keeps the series’ familiar engine — a roomful of alibis, bruised egos and carefully arranged half-truths — but relocates the mayhem to a small-town church with a dark history. Netflix’s synopsis for “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” describes Blanc teaming up with an earnest young priest to investigate a “perfectly impossible” crime, a premise that swaps sunlit satire for stained-glass shadows.
The cast is built for that kind of pressure-cooker setting. O’Connor’s Father Jud Duplencity arrives with a past that makes him an easy target, while Brolin’s Monsignor Jefferson Wicks looms as a blunt, temperamental authority figure. Close plays the kind of unignorable local presence that can either steady a community or weaponize its secrets. A larger ensemble — including Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Jeremy Renner, Mila Kunis, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack and Thomas Haden Church — rounds out the suspect pool, detailed in Netflix Tudum’s overview of the plot and cast.
So far, the darker swing appears to be paying off. Rotten Tomatoes listed “Wake Up Dead Man” at 92% with critics and 94% with audiences this week, with the site’s consensus pointing to the film’s fixation on faith and O’Connor’s performance as reasons the series still feels freshly sharpened.
How “Wake Up Dead Man” fits into Netflix’s Benoit Blanc strategy
The release pattern is familiar, but it didn’t happen by accident. Netflix’s plans to bankroll two more Benoit Blanc films became public in 2021, when it was reported to be closing a massive sequel deal with Johnson and Craig, according to Deadline’s report on the “Knives Out” sequel agreement. By 2022, the streamer had pushed further into theaters with “Glass Onion,” reaching a one-week deal that brought the film to major chains — a moment AP chronicled in its report on Netflix’s theater-chain agreement.
That push-and-pull has been part of the series since the beginning. The original 2019 “Knives Out” landed as a big-screen crowd-pleaser and, crucially, a reminder that a smart, star-stacked whodunit can still feel like an event. The Guardian’s 2019 review captured the appeal of Craig’s drawling sleuth and Johnson’s genre play — the DNA that “Wake Up Dead Man” now tests in more shadowed territory.
Even after the Netflix debut, the filmmakers have kept the theatrical argument alive. GQ’s post-release interview with Craig and Johnson underscores the tension behind “Wake Up Dead Man”: a streaming-first franchise that still wants the electricity of a packed room when Blanc finally turns the story inside out.
