Ever since I saw there would be a third installment in the Knives Out series, I could not wait for it to hit my screen in December of 2025. I first saw Knives Out when it was released in 2019. I absolutely loved it—the iconic ensemble cast, the whodunnit setup, the quick and funny script, the colorful wardrobe, and most of all, Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc. Blanc might just be one of my favorite new-age characters, because not only does Craig pull off a “Kentucky-fried Foghorn Leghorn drawl” (Chris Evans said it best!) with grace, but he also takes what could very well be an obnoxious know-it-all and forms him into someone whom we love and watch in awe while he solves complicated and diverse crimes with ease. 

Wake Up Dead Man hit especially close to home for me as an Irish girl who grew up in the Catholic church. In that community you unfortunately find a lot of people like Josh Brolin’s character, Monsignor Wicks. His character is that of many priests, preachers, and members of the church I’ve met throughout my lifetime: greedy, corrupt, and the complete opposite of what a true Christian is supposed to represent. On the other hand, every once and a while, you’ll find someone a little more like Father Judd, played by Josh O’Conner, who believes that God came to heal the world, not fight it. “You start fighting wolves, and before you know it, everyone you don’t understand is a wolf.” This is all contrary to who he used to be: a fighter, living on the street, who killed a man in the ring. Yet he still puts his dukes down and opens his arms like he believes Jesus was here to do. “Christ came to heal the world, not fight it.”

I found myself tearing up multiple times throughout the entire movie, but one scene that immediately comes to mind is when Judd and Blanc are calling a construction company to get records to help solve the case. Judd is on the phone, urging the woman on the other end, saying he needs the records as soon as possible. He’s pacing around and looking at Blanc until the woman on the phone, Louise, played by Bridgette Everett, asks him to pray for her. While we hear her over the phone, we are shown a close-up of Judd’s face. When he hears her question, he pauses, and we watch him realize that he’s doing exactly what he feared, making it about himself and not Jesus. He asks what she wants him to pray for; she tells him her mother is in hospice, and the last conversation she and her mother had was an argument, and her mother won’t speak to her. Louise starts crying, and Judd reassures her, “I’m here, I’m here.” It cuts to hours later; it’s dark outside and raining, and Judd is still praying. He hangs up with Louise but assures her that he is always there for her, day or night. Acts of kindness like that, making an effort for a total stranger, are an art I believe is lost in this world. Not only was this character written, performed, and directed beautifully, but choosing to steer clear of painting him perfectly and showing us the moments we all have, whether it be within our religion or jobs, relationships, or school, sometimes we all lose sight of what’s truly important to us.

I do believe that this film is the most thematically complex and thought-out of all three Knives Out installments. Because like the rest of the series, writer and director Rian Johnson always finds a way to show us that there is still a beautiful human aspect to every tragedy and presents that perfectly. But specifically with the theme of this film, we can see him using Blanc’s relationship with Father Judd to explore Blanc’s own relationship with religion. Blanc says himself when he is asked by Judd how he feels about the chapel they’re standing in, “Someone has shown a story to me that I do not believe. That is built upon the empty promise of a child’s fairy tale, filled with malevolence and misogyny and homophobia.” So we know going forward that Blanc’s perception of the church is not completely positive, and we are shown more and more of Blanc’s beliefs and backstory. Johnson perfectly uses his religion in this context to show us how important it is we give one another grace where it may be hard to do so or when we don’t completely believe what they do or live the life they do. 

Unlike other directors and writers in this generation, Johnson never utilizes plot twists as a cheap cop-out to exert the element of surprise, but instead he makes use of them to elevate the story tenfold every time. And that’s why I love this series so much. As much as one could critique these films for having too many things going on at once, you can’t overlook how well the overarching flow of the plot takes us to this huge climax every time. Blanc is going on a long monologue that feels like he’s guiding us through the maze that we’ve been aimlessly walking through the entire movie. And I applaud Rian Johnson for being able to create these movies with the passion and intention that he does. 

So, did watching one two-hour and thirty-minute movie completely turn around my view of the Catholic Church? No, but it did give me a small glimmer of hope, and in a way it smoothed out my harsh idea of the Catholic Church and religion as a whole. I think after you’ve been in the church your whole life, you can very easily sort out who is a Monsignor Wicks and who is a Father Judd in the church and outside the church. Sure, there’s plenty of each, but after enough time you narrow down to all the bad, not the good. And after watching Wake Up Dead Man, I was almost given a whole new outlook—I was reminded that Father Judds do exist, and they aren’t as few and far between as it may seem.