Wake Up Dead Man is the third installment in the Knives Out series, and follows a former boxer-turned Catholic priest by the name of Jud Duplenticy, played by Josh O’Connor, who is made an assistant pastor at a church run by Josh Brolin’s Monsignor Jefferson Wicks. When Wicks is mysteriously killed on Easter Sunday, all the suspicion is put on Duplenticy by the church, and thus, Detective Benoit Blanc is put on the case. As the mystery goes on, Blanc quickly learns that this is his most difficult case yet.

One thing that really sets Wake Up Dead Man apart from Knives Out and Glass Onion is its tone, and I really like it. It’s a lot darker and more serious, as it's playing with much more serious subject matter, being, of course, religion. Don’t get me wrong, it still has plenty of humor, which is done excellently by the way, as it doesn’t ever get in the way of serious scenes (you can say the same thing about all three Knives Out movies, to be honest), but this Knives Out movie probably has the most haunting feel to it of the trilogy, at least for now it’s a trilogy. It’s definitely the closest we’ve gotten to a horror movie from Rian Johnson that I’ve seen.

Just like this being the hardest case for Blanc to solve yet, I also found it the most puzzling for me as well. Every time that I thought I knew the answer to the mystery, the movie pretty quickly gave me something that completely threw me off in the best possible way. It’s full of so many different twists and turns that completely work, and some of them are completely bonkers, to say the least, which made for some pretty good entertainment.

The camaraderie between Blanc and our new main character, Duplenticy, I have to say, was quite good, too. It definitely doesn’t top the original Knives Out with Marta Cabrera, played by Ana de Armas, but easily comes in second place. Blanc is fantastic as always, so there’s not much to add other than his very blatant thoughts on religion, I guess, but Duplenticy is a really fascinating new character. He’s probably the most complex of the three, I guess, sidekicks to Blanc (Marta Cabrera and Andi Brand (Janelle Monáe) are the other two), with all of the information revealed about his past, as well as everything that he does throughout the film. You still root for him, but he is probably the one who makes the most questionable decisions.

I thought the pacing was incredibly well done, too, and by far the best paced of the trilogy, despite being the longest. Its many twists and turns kept me intrigued, and every time I started to lose just a little bit of interest, the movie gave me a new twist to hook me right back in. Having a lot of twists could get repetitive after a while, but I didn’t think that at all when it comes to Wake Up Dead Man. All of them worked for me and made me a lot more invested in the story. Some of the twists were quite shocking, as well.

When it comes to the mixed, I only have one, and that is this film’s portrayal of religion. It’s not offensive or blasphemous by any means, but the Catholics here are anything but pure. The whole church in this movie just kind of feels “dirty” and “despicable.” Pretty much everyone has something they are hiding; none of them are really all that great people, and in fact, they're all pretty corrupt. As I said, it’s not offensive or anything, because the film clearly portrays these people as corrupt and not typical Christians, but it’s definitely something worth mentioning.

I really only have one big negative, but it’s a pretty major one, which is why my score for the film isn’t any higher. By the end of the movie, despite it being two and a half hours, I felt that barely any time was spent with the side characters. I kind of had that problem with Glass Onion (I can’t remember if I mentioned that in that review or not, though), but it’s honestly worse here. Maybe that made it harder to predict, sure, but that could also be kind of an artificial way of doing it. I really couldn’t describe to you any of the side characters, all that well, in a full sentence, except for maybe two.

Other than that, however, this was easily my favorite of the Knives Out movies so far.