What did you see? The 2025 whodunnit, Knives Out 3: Wake Up Dead Man.

Where does it pick up from Knives Out 2: Glass Onion Boogaloo? I don’t know if it’s in order or what.

Was it good? Yeah, I liked it. I’ll do my best to write about it without spoilers.

Knives Out 3 starts off with what appears to be a recounting of recent events from the point of view of a pugilistic priest, Jud. Jud had knocked out a snooty priest at another congregation so he’s been sent to a sleepy town where he’s temped to punch another priest, Monsignor Wicks. Wicks has reduced their flock to a handful of dutiful followers, picking on and scaring away a variety of contemporary marginalized groups who I guess haven’t gotten the real world public memo that a lot of churches just aren’t as open to everyone as Jesus would like them to be (I think this is a view shared by the filmmaker, and I’m sorry to generalize – I know Pope Leo The 1st White Sox Fan is making some efforts to change some minds). These remaining churchgoers are all a little broken and may have handed their lives, careers, and even money to Wicks because… they must really feel like they have nowhere else to go.

Wicks immediately challenges pastor Jud with a variety of gross confessions followed by accusations that Jud wants to steal the church away from him. Jud just wants to spread the gospel and comfort the troubled, the troubled being people who probably see a shrink or doctor. (The latter might not tell the flock what they want to hear, so maybe the path of least resistance, Wick roping them in to be cabal of sorts, seems like a path forward to action that will change their lives.) From there, Wicks is killed in a mysterious manner, in the presence of, but out of view from, the churchgoers, with blood on Jud’s hands. Enter Benoit Blanc, the series’ vehicle that take Jud on as a passenger before driving him to the solution.

This is the most convoluted mystery of the three, with the plot (IN THE MOVIE’S PLOT!) taken from existing murder mystery novels that the characters apparently have all read. It also feels the densest and melodramatic, with our put-upon priest having to pause searching for the solution that might clear him so he can listen to the concerns of a worried possible parishioner while the police lose patience on Blanc and close in on Jud.

It is less contemporary than Glass Onion, but still has yet another character who aspires to be an online influencer to break into hard-right-wing politics. And I agree with Rian Johnson’s political leaning (that I infer from this movie, that is) but it’s overt to the point of distracting…yet, seriously, most media companies have been overtaken by monopolists who aren’t hiding an open oligarchy, who have embraced the right wing talking points and are eliminating center left voices from airwaves and elsewhere, so maybe a loud voice mocking an albeit empty and basic modern right winger is needed.

Despite this, the melodrama, and that Jud seems to get to tell the whole story that risks being an unreliable narrator, I very much enjoyed this one, more than the 2nd for sure. There’s a LOT going on, with every discovery of a clue (or body) leading to more questions and bigger problems for Jud. Benoit Blanc even steps aside to let the culprit confess like in a regular confession. I have other comments (such as, did they not do autopsies in the 50s or 60s?) but for the most part, I was able to discard the problems I have with Johnson’s contemporary archetypes in what feels like an old fashioned murder mysteries and get swept up in the mystery.

I saw it in the theater, I think it shows up on Netflix on December 12th, so give it a spin.