Netflix has dropped the big official teaser trailer for Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, the star-studded third outing from writer-director Rian Johnson, with Daniel Craig back as Benoit Blanc. Watch the trailer above and read on for the info.
The new mystery
A small upstate New York parish, a “locked-room”–style impossibility, and Blanc staring down his most personal case yet. When young priest Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) arrives to assist the charismatic Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), the congregation — Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church), Vera Draven, Esq. (Kerry Washington), Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), Dr Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), bestselling author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott), and cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny) — is rocked by a murder that makes no sense. With no obvious suspect, police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis) teams with Blanc to pick the parish apart.
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Rhian Johnson’s angle
“This film charts [Blanc’s] most personal journey yet,” Johnson tells Netflix site Tudum. “He’s forced to engage with the case — and with himself — in a way that’s completely new.” Each entry is a chance to pivot the genre: “Every time we make one of these films, it’s fun to think, ‘How can this one explore a whole different corner of this genre?’ ” Johnson says. This time he leans into John Dickson Carr’s impossible-crime tradition: “It’s a side alley of the whodunit genre: the impossible crime. A corpse is found in a locked room, a knife in his back, he is alone, and there are no ways in or out. With such a constrained premise, there are only a few real options to work with. It’s the mystery version of a chess puzzle, with just enough pieces on the board and no more, and a few predetermined moves at your disposal.”
Johnson is also drawing on clerical tales: “[Agatha] Christie’s Murder at the Vicarage is a classic, but my biggest influence for this film was G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries,” Johnson says. “Themes of guilt, mystery, morality, and fallible humanity all feel right at home in a church, with a man of God at the center of the mix.”
Cast & release date
Alongside Craig and O’Connor, the ensemble stacks deep: Brolin, Close, Kunis, Renner, Washington, Scott, Spaeny, McCormack, and Haden Church.
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 6, where it drew wide acclaim – it currently holds a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing. It opens the BFI London Film Festival on October 8, will play in select U.S. cinemas from November 26, and is released globally on Netflix on December 12.
