Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man arrives with the confidence of a filmmaker who knows exactly how sharp his knives are and enjoys watching us admire the cut. This is the third outing for Benoit Blanc, and Daniel Craig now wears Blanc like a perfectly tailored suit. The accent is still outrageous, the intellect still intimidating, but there’s a growing melancholy beneath the charm that gives this chapter a darker pulse.
Johnson, who previously gave us Knives Out and Glass Onion, strips away some of the sunlit whimsy of the last film and replaces it with something closer to moral rot. This is a murder mystery that smells faintly of incense and guilt. Blanc is dropped into a world where faith, power, and hypocrisy collide, and Johnson lets that tension simmer rather than rushing to the punchlines. The humor is still there, but it’s barbed now. The laughs catch in your throat.
Craig is surrounded by a star-studded cast that understands the assignment. Each character is sharply defined, not as caricatures but as walking contradictions. No one is innocent, and worse, most of them know it. Johnson’s script delights in misdirection, but it’s the character work that makes the twists land. You’re not just surprised by the reveals; you’re implicated in them.
Visually, the film leans into shadows and candlelight, trading the postcard aesthetics of Glass Onion for something more claustrophobic. The camera lingers, the edits breathe, and the score quietly nudges rather than shouts. It feels closer in spirit to Brick than Johnson’s broader recent work.
Wake Up Dead Man is very good because it trusts us. It doesn’t just want to entertain. It wants to unsettle. And it succeeds, smiling politely while it does.
RHFC Rating: 9/10 🍿
