WAKE UP DEAD MAN: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY***** - BFI London Film Festival 2025 - Opening Night Gala

Rian Johnson has done it again with another fantastically fun and wickedly tricksy murder mystery - the third in his Knives Out franchise. WAKE UP DEAD MAN follows his satire on narcissistic billionaire tech bros (GLASS ONION) with an on-the-nose dissection of contemporary MAGA Christianity’s nasty judgmental power-hungry malevolent brand of religion. 

An absolutely superb Josh O’Connor (also starring in MASTERMIND in this year’s LFF stars as a young kind and earnest priest called Father Judd. He’s sent to a cultish rural church in upstate New York, presided over by Josh Brolin’s wicked fire-and-brimstone preacher Monsignor Wick. Wick is aided and abetted by a Mrs Danvers-like spooky woman-of-all-work Martha (Glenn Close) and her faithful lapdog Samson (Thomas Haden-Church). The parishioners are all seemingly within Wick’s grasp when he’s stabbed in the back in an apparent locked room mystery. We are thirty minutes into the film - so enter Daniel Craig’s deliciously camp Southern detective Benoit Blanc to save our young compassionate priest and reveal who the real murderer is! 

The first thing to say is that this film works brilliantly as a murder mystery, and I say this as someone who just reread and podcasted about every single one of Agatha Christie’s crime novels. The mystery is satisfyingly tricky and intricate and solvable - though I doubt many will. It works in the best tradition of debunking apparently supernatural crimes and a good knowledge of Wilkie Collins and Sherlock Holmes will certainly help you. 

The second thing to say is that the film works equally well as a satire on MAGA and unfeeling religion and ruthless politicians. What’s even better is that it balances cynicism with earnest respect for genuine faith, by balancing the viewpoints of self-confessed heretic Benoit Blanc and the young priest Father Judd. There’s a deeply moving scene between Judd and a receptionist called Louise that shows what faith and ministry can do when administered with compassion. 

Finally, the film is just a damn good time. It’s funny. It has jump scares. It drops in hilarious one-liners about contemporary culture - whether substack or Netflix. And we even get a self-referential Star Wars joke. There is quite literally nothing not to like in this wonderful film. Bring on Knives Out 4!

WAKE UP DEAD MAN has a running time of 140 minutes. It played Toronto and opened London and will be on Netflix on December 12th.

GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY***** - BFI London Film Festival - Closing Night Gala

I was not the world's biggest fan of KNIVES OUT - Rian Johnson's closed-house murder-mystery starring Daniel Craig as the detective with the broad southern drawl. I sat stony silent in a packed London Film Festival screening with the rest of the audience having the time of their life.  I thought the mystery wasn't complex or interesting and the performances fell flat for me. I just didn't get it. As a result, I had zero expectations for its high-budget sequel, GLASS ONION, and was cringing at the thought of its two-hour twenty minutes running time. 

Well reader, I can happily report that GLASS ONION is one of my favourite movies of the year!  It flew by its running time in a haze of laugh-out loud comedy; brilliantly-acted outlandish characters; and a proper mystery that's both tricksy, meta-textual and politically biting!

The movie stars Daniel Craig, once again returning as Benoit Blanc, and leaning even further into the camp of a fussily over-dressed and anachronistic famous detective in the Agatha Christie style. The new villain of the piece is Ed Norton's tech billionaire Miles Bron, clearly based on Elon Musk. He's a vainglorious fake-hippie who invites all of his old college friends to a yearly retreat, this time on his supervillain island lair.  As the movie unfolds, in good detective tradition, we realise that each of the characters needs Miles for his money or connections and has a motive to kill him. There's even a MacGuffin - a piece of a new renewable energy-producing crystal widget that is also - oh no! - rather dangerous!

The heart of the piece - or maybe its moral compass in a sea of characters that are more or less self-interested and despicable - is Janelle Monae's Andi Brand.  As the movie unfolds we discover that Andi was in fact the brains behind Miles' big invention and they haven't really spoken in years. So why has she shown up on the island? And who invited Benoit?

The first half of the movie explores the connections between the characters and leads us to the murder. The second half of the film goes back and reveals what was really happening. This might sound tedious but it's so damn clever, smart and involving I promise you it won't feel like a rehash. But I can't tell you exactly why it works for fear of spoiling the plot - so I'll just encourage you to watch.

GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 139 minutes. It played Toronto 2022 and will be released on Netflix on December 23rd.