Wake Up Dead Man’s Biggest Change Makes It the Best Knives Out Movie

Wake Up Dead Man is the best Knives Out movie to date because of a few key changes Rian Johnson makes in this film when compared to the other ones.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is now available to stream on Netflix. The third film in the Knives Out series, it once again sees Daniel Craig reprise his role as Benoit Blanc, while the cast also includes Josh O’Connor as Jud Duplenticy, Josh Brolin as Msgr. Jefferson Wicks, Jeremy Renner as Dr. Nat Sharp, Glenn Close as Martha Delacroix, Kerry Washington as Vera Draven, Andrew Scott as Lee Ross, and more.

Why is Wake Up Dead Man the best Knives Out movie?

The Knives Out movies are known for being fun murder mysteries that always have all-star casts. Both Knives Out and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery touch on some bigger topics — typically greed, as Glass Onion is especially an “eat the rich” kind of movie. In the case of the first two movies, however, those themes are largely lingering in the background while the mysteries take center stage.

Wake Up Dead Man has a murder mystery, of course, and it’s one that’s much harder to solve than Knives Out and Glass Onion. But it’s also getting at a lot more. More so than being a whodunnit, Wake Up Dead Man is a story about the Josh O’Connor character’s crisis of faith and trying to figure out what it means to be a priest when thrown into a community that’s full of hatred and distrust.

In what is easily the best scene of the movie, Josh O’Connor prays with a woman, Louise, over the phone, which gives him a sort of reawakening. The mystery and clearing his name hardly seem important anymore; he’s realized his whole purpose for being in this place is to serve people, not running around with Blanc. He obviously gets drawn back into the whole murder story before long, but it’s a real character arc that touches on something deeper than we’ve seen in any of the Knives Out movies up until this point.

As a result of this, Blanc winds up being a supporting character rather than the lead in Wake Up Dead Man. While this might disappoint some fans of the franchise (there are still some great Blanc moments in this movie, rest assured), the decision to focus on O’Connor pays off big time. Johnson delivers a movie that is against weaponized religion; however, his respect toward O’Connor’s beliefs and the idea of spirituality hit some incredibly high emotional notes that Knives Out and Glass Onion were unable to.