‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery’ review: Daniel Craig’s suave sleuth returns

“A textbook example of an impossibly perfect crime,” marvels Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc, as he considers the death of a preacher, in this third and largely enjoyable Knives Out movie. The curtain-raiser for this year’s London Film Festival, it again shows that nothing is impossible for Blanc, the southern gentleman sleuth with a preternatural gift for unpicking even the most head-scratching of mysteries. You know he’ll save the day and solve the crime, even if that crime comes loaded with more mis-directions than Google Maps.

The setting for Wake Up Dead Man – a nod to the U2 song, apparently – is Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, a church in the quaint town of Chimney Rock run by Josh Brolin’s singular clergyman Monsignor Jefferson Wicks. Joining him is Father Jud (Josh O’Connor), a temperamental ex-boxer who has been reassigned to Wicks’ church after an altercation with another priest. Soon enough, he’s hearing Wicks’ confessions including masturbatory fantasies about Japanese cat cafes – one of the film’s funniest sequences.

Unfortunately, Father Jud takes issue with the way Wicks runs the church – with a congregation that includes a town doctor (Jeremy Renner), an ailing cellist (Cailee Spaeny), a put-upon lawyer (Kerry Washington) and an author of sci-fi/mystery books (Andrew Scott). Most of them are present when Wicks dies on Good Friday of all days – a Devil-branded knife stabbed in his back, seconds after he ducks from view and collapses in an alcove.

With no possible other exit from the alcove, suspicion falls on Jud, who discovers the body – not least because he’d been filmed yelling “You’re poisoning this church” to Wicks by the unctuous YouTuber Cy (Daryl McCormack). But Craig’s detective sees the bigger picture – in a story where hidden fortunes, greedy heirs and Jesus-like resurrections all come into play.

Writer-director Rian Johnson’s script isn’t quite the perfect box of tricks. It’s fairly tenuous that Blanc would turn up for this puzzler – apparently at the behest of Mila Kunis’ local cop. But it’s hard to punch down on a movie with such a riotously entertaining cast – one that also includes Jeffrey Wright as a ball-busting bishop, Thomas Haden Church as a faithful groundskeeper and Glenn Close as Wicks’ right-hand woman.

Johnson makes his literary influences clear – with nods to Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and other so-called ‘locked door’ mysteries. Certainly, Johnson is a good student of Christie, the queen of the whodunnit, and his script revels in a grisly sleight-of-hand almost as much it enjoys prodding the Catholic Church.

While it’s a little over-elaborate – at 140 minutes, you might well call it ‘The Long Good Friday’ – it’s impossible not to be amused by Craig doing a Scooby Doo impression (no, really) or Scott’s author beset by fans who all look like John Goodman in The Big Lebowski. With Josh O’Connor also absolutely terrific as the punch-drunk priest, Johnson’s mystery movie will be a perfect fireside companion when it hits Netflix in early December. Guaranteed, you won’t find a more fiendish film this winter.