A sequel that reaches higher than it can hold
Rian Johnson (Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, The Last Jedi) returns to his whodunit franchise with the ambition of transforming it into something darker, weightier, and morally charged. The opening minutes of Wake Up Dead Man make it clear this will not be another playful mystery in the tradition of Knives Out. Instead, Johnson aims for a heightened emotional and thematic register — diving into faith, guilt, responsibility, and the decay of personal integrity.
It is a bold attempt, but one that ultimately collapses under its own thematic gravity. The film constantly signals its desire to be taken seriously, to be seen as the “grown-up” chapter of the franchise. In doing so, it loses much of the elegant, sly charm that made the original a modern classic. Instead of a crisp, clever mystery laced with social commentary, the audience receives a heavy, brooding drama that never quite reconciles its ambitions with the franchise’s core identity.
Benoit Blanc no longer commands his own film
Daniel Craig (Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, No Time to Die) is once again magnetic as Benoit Blanc, yet the screenplay sidelines him more aggressively than ever before. Blanc has always been an observer of human folly, but here he becomes a spectator in his own narrative — present, articulate, but rarely the force that propels the investigation.
Craig’s performance remains sharp, but the character is written as reactive rather than investigative. He comments more than he uncovers; he watches more than he interrogates. For a character whose charisma and oddball brilliance defined the franchise, this shift results in a noticeable loss of momentum. Blanc feels displaced, a supporting player in a story that was sold as his.
The new central figure cracks under the pressure
Josh O’Connor (Challengers, La Chimera) delivers another intense and emotionally layered performance, but the film overloads his character with a messianic level of thematic responsibility. He becomes the vessel for Johnson’s most overt moral and religious ideas — a character built to carry the film’s entire emotional weight on his back.
It is too much.
Instead of a compelling, complex protagonist, he becomes a collection of symbols and metaphors. O’Connor does everything possible with the material, but the writing pushes him toward melodrama. His character stops feeling like a person and becomes a device — the cinematic equivalent of an overburdened sermon.
A prestigious ensemble with nowhere to go
Johnson assembles an enviable cast, yet gives them little room to breathe. Glenn Close (The Back Home, Swan Song), Kerry Washington (The School for Good and Evil, American Son), Andrew Scott (Ripley, All of Us Strangers), and Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla, Alien: Romulus) all deliver sharply defined moments, but none of them are allowed to grow.
The film’s desire to assign every character a dramatic arc results in narrative clutter. Motivations pile on top of each other, emotional beats overlap, and entire personalities vanish into the screenplay’s density. What should be a dynamic ensemble becomes a congested crowd of half-realized intentions.
An overwritten narrative that drains rather than intrigues
Johnson’s trademark narrative structure — shifting timeframes, flashbacks, and withheld information — returns, but it no longer feels fresh. It feels mechanical. Instead of delightful twists that reshape the story, the reveals arrive like obligatory checkmarks. The audience can sense when a twist is coming not because of clever foreshadowing, but because the film is following the exact architecture of its predecessors.
The pacing suffers. Long stretches drown in self-serious dialogue, while key investigative sequences feel rushed or oddly truncated. The film works hard to appear complex, but it struggles to remain coherent.
A tonal experiment that never finds its balance
The new religious and moral themes are ambitious, but they are grafted onto the mystery rather than integrated into it. The film swings between somber meditation and stylized genre play, never fully committing to either. As a result, scenes meant to carry profound dramatic weight feel overwrought, while moments intended to echo the earlier films’ wit fall flat.
What emerges is a tonal tug-of-war: a film desperate to evolve beyond its origins yet unable to leave them behind.
Outstanding actors, but underdeveloped characters
The cast is too strong for the writing they are given. Close’s quiet authority, Scott’s simmering intensity, Spaeny’s sharpness, and Washington’s precision each spark at moments, but the film rarely follows through. Without space to develop, their arcs feel ornamental — carefully placed props rather than meaningful contributions to the central drama.
Is Wake Up Dead Man a worthy continuation of the Knives Out franchise?
In the end, Wake Up Dead Man is a respectable but uneven entry — a film with grand ambitions, striking performances, and a desire to deepen its universe, yet one that falters in execution. It is the franchise’s most serious and thematically ambitious chapter, but also its least cohesive.
- The movie wants to be profound.
- It wants to be bold.
- It wants to be transformative.
But its reach exceeds its grasp.
Wake Up Dead Man is not a failure — but it is a film in conflict with itself, a mystery weighed down by the gravity of its own aspirations. It entertains, but does not enchant. It provokes, but does not fully persuade. And for a series built on cleverness, elegance, and precision, that is a noticeable slip.
This review was written following the film’s world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery opens in select theaters on November 26 before arriving on Netflix on December 5.
