The Knives Out franchise is a singular Hollywood miracle: A mid-budget blockbuster franchise that brings in a sprawling variety of A-list talent and delivers consistent quality, yet each entry is so radically different that we never know what we’re getting. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything else quite like it, aside from the John Wick movies (not counting Ballerina, of course).

So here we are with Wake Up Dead Man, firmly establishing Knives Out among the rare few cinematic franchises to go three chapters without sucking.

Of course you already know Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), so let’s introduce the characters you don’t know. We lay our scene at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, a Catholic church in the center of some backwater town in upstate New York.

• Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) started out on the mean streets and came up as a boxer before taking up the faith. He was recently transferred to serve as a new assistant preacher at this particular church.
• Martha (Glenn Close) is the uptight administrator who’s done pretty much everything at the church for as long as anyone can remember.
• Samson (Thomas Haden Church) is Martha’s husband, the church groundskeeper and a recovering alcoholic.
• Dr. Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner) is the local doctor. His wife and kids recently left him and he’s been a wreck ever since.
• Vera Draven (Kerry Washington) is the daughter of the church’s old lawyer (now deceased), and she’s become a cutthroat lawyer in her own right.
• Cy (Daryl McCormack) is Vera’s adoptive son. He’s a failed conservative politician, but that doesn’t stop him from recording literally everything as fodder for his alt-right YouTube channel.
• Lee Ross (Andrew Scott) is a best-selling sci-fi author, though his sales have notably declined in recent years. He’s attempting to rally by writing a book based on his experiences with the church and catering to the survivalist doomer crowd.
• Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny) is an accomplished concert cellist forced into retirement due to some undiagnosable neurological issue. She’s come to this particular church with the promise of miraculous healing by faith.

In the margins, we’ve got Mila Kunis playing our hapless rural police chief. Jeffrey Wright only appears at the very beginning and the very end, but damned if he isn’t a pleasure to see as always. Annie Hamilton and James Faulkner get brief yet memorable turns in a few select flashback scenes. And of course it wouldn’t be a Rian Johnson picture without Noah Segan and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a couple of blink-and-you’ll-miss-them cameo appearances.

Our murder victim is Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), the local reverend and grandson of the church’s founder. Simply put, Wicks is an asshole. The kind of sanctimonious strongman bully who uses religion to justify his hatred against anyone who doesn’t look or think like him. The man isn’t just bigoted, he’s outright misanthropic.

What’s worse, Wicks utilizes the pulpit in such a way that he does his absolute best to deliberately target the newcomers. He’s hazing anyone who comes through the door, doing his absolute best to drive people out of his church. That way, the ones who stay behind get the moral superiority of knowing that they toughed it out. In this way, Wicks has effectively built the town into his own little cult of personality, full of people too scared to cross him and too proud of their status as the true enduring believers. All pitifully and willfully oblivious to the fact that Wicks hates his own followers just like he hates literally anyone who isn’t him.

The past two Knives Out movies had a sharp yet subtle political bias, condemning certain political trends without ever referring to any one group or party or public figure by name. The first movie was very much about exploitation of the working class, especially BIPOC and immigrant workers. The second movie was about the farcical deification of wealthy idiots whose only real talent is using their money and charisma to strong-arm others into buying their delusions of greatness.

While this mystery does involve a vast fortune (it’s a long story and I’m not getting into details here), this one isn’t really about socioeconomic class. It’s really more about comparing/contrasting faith and religion. More specifically, it’s about crackpots deliberately conflating the two so they can exploit others and/or be exploited. I need hardly add that this is a cornerstone of our ongoing “post-truth” society, something that Benoit Blanc — a self-appointed avatar of truth — has to grapple with in his own way.

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that Blanc is not the least bit religious. Indeed, he finds the whole concept of religion to be an extravagant fiction and he outright condemns all the many unspeakable crimes that have been committed and covered up in the names of various churches. The film is explicitly clear in showing how religious leaders can be fallible fuckwits just like the rest of us, and religion can be abused in awful ways. But at the same time, we get some genuinely beautiful scenes about the human need to believe in something greater and connect with each other on a deeper spiritual level.

Despite all the numerous reasons why Jud couldn’t possibly have committed the murder, he is nonetheless the chief suspect. Because this is a town of yokels who’ve been brainwashed by a self-serving brute into believing that the whole world is out to get them and this newcomer can’t be trusted. But that doesn’t stop Jud from trying to lead with empathy and compassion. He’s not always perfect and the townfolks’ irrational hatred of Jud often leads him to lapse in terribly foolish ways. But he genuinely wants the best for his flock nonetheless.

Granted, there are a couple of clues and red herrings that don’t work especially well. There’s one particular clue involving an RFID signal that’s outright laughable. But on the whole, this is a seemingly impossible murder with a surprisingly elegant solution. All due credit to the filmmakers, everything from start to finish was fair play.

That said, the previous films established that Blanc has an uncanny knack for selectively lying to everyone around him. He manipulates people so that everything and everyone is exactly where they need to be when the truth finally comes out. That doesn’t happen here. There are so many times when it’s borderline impossible to tell if Blanc is lying to trick the suspects, lying to protect someone, or if this case really is unsolvable and he’s got no idea what the fuck he’s doing. Most of the time, it turns out to be the second or possibly the third. I really would’ve liked to see more of the first, especially given how that method worked out so astoundingly well in Glass Onion.

Overall, Wake Up Dead Man is yet another wonderful Benoit Blanc caper. It’s a deeply compelling mystery thriller with a lot of fun plot threads to unravel. Some characters and plot threads are more intriguing than others, but the whole mystery is so superbly crafted and the religious/political themes are so compelling that I expect it’ll hold up well upon multiple viewings.

I don’t even know if Johnson and Craig themselves know how many more stories there are to tell with this character, but I’m with them for as far as they want to go. Strongly recommended.