Relevant Magazine

How Rian Johnson’s Reckoning With Faith Led to ‘Wake Up Dead Man’

How Rian Johnson’s Reckoning With Faith Led to ‘Wake Up Dead Man’

Friday, December 12, 2025
Director Rian Johnson has always treated genre as a set of tools rather than a destination. With Wake Up Dead Man, the third film in his Knives Out series, those tools are still sharp — the clockwork plotting, the sprawling ensemble and Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc orbiting the mess like a curious moon — but…