Rian Johnson revitalized the whodunit with Knives Out. Building on classic mysteries like those by Agatha Christie, his story of a wealthy family struggling for control of an inheritance left fans clamoring for more. This led to Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, another story of the ultra-rich getting their comeuppance at the hands of Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig).
But for the third movie, this December’s Wake Up Dead Man, the series is swapping out its usual tone of intrigue for something creepier. It’s a big change, but it’s just what the story needs to continue its love letters to the murder mysteries of old.
A new teaser from Netflix has given us our first look at Wake Up Dead Man’s story. The minute-long sneak peek shows Reverend Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) walking up to a rural chapel, Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close) kneeling in prayer, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) stepping behind the church’s lectern, and police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis) looking at something in shock.
The only dialogue comes from Blanc himself, who explains why the movie’s supposed Lazarus-like events are the perfect case for him. “The ‘impossible crime,’” he says. “For a man of reason, this is the Holy Grail. This was dressed as a miracle. But it's just a murder. And I solve murders.”
That’s true, but this murder is unlike the others we’ve seen Blanc tackle, as Knives Out is moving on from its eat-the-rich satire to tell a gothic drama. Doubling down on the class commentary made sense for Glass Onion — Agatha Christie’s best works often focused on the rich and famous — but she wasn’t beholden to that tone. Many of her novels were set in small villages just like the one in the trailer, so mixing things up fits the franchise just fine.
“Small town murder” is a key subgenre of the murder mystery landscape, one explored by everything from Nordic noir to TV procedurals. By the time Murder, She Wrote stopped airing, a good portion of Cabot Cove, Maine, had fallen victim to one tragedy or another that Jessica Fletcher had to unravel. There’s no shortage of religious mysteries out there either: Father Brown, a British series about a murder-solving priest, has been renewed for a 13th season, and it sparked a spinoff about a murder-solving nun.
If Knives Out is really Rian Johnson’s love letter to the murder mystery genre, then sticking with the critique of capitalism would have only been scratching the surface. There are a thousand ways to solve a murder, and Wake Up Dead Man will finally show us a new one. And then maybe the next Knives Out will have Benoit solve a cozy mystery in a bookstore, then share a recipe at the end.
