San Diego International Film Festival 2025
When the fiery monsignor of a small parish turns up dead and the suspect list is a bit too long, the infamously unique private detective Benoit Blanc is called in to investigate.
Who doesn’t want to see Josh Brolin up in a priestly pulpit, shouting fire and condemnation? The man has been everything from Thanos to Cable to Gurney Halleck and beyond, and recently smashed the role of Archer in the breakout horror hit Weapons, so of course we want to see him playing Monsignor Jefferson Wicks here in the latest Knives Out mystery! Make sure your crime scene is all taped off, and let’s get into this!
So despite his troubling fisticuffs past, Reverend Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) really is a man of faith, a believer in the love and forgiveness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and genuinely wants to share that redemption with others he encounters. After an encounter that ends up with Jud needing to be disciplined yet again but not enough to defrock him, Bishop Langstrom (Jeffrey Wright) tosses Jud to the ravening lone wolf Wicks of the small town of Chimney Rock.
The townsfolk are already wrapped up in Wicks’ stranglehold on their lives, the last thing they need is this rather young upstart priest coming in to shake his finger at them like misbehaving children. Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), a hideously devout Church woman who serves as Wicks’ right-hand woman, especially wants Jud to close his rather, well, preachy mouth. Between her and the Church groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Hayden Church), they know far too many small town secrets, including some Wicks would much rather be kept buried.
We are here on Good Friday as Wicks is giving his usual tea and brimstone act when, in the midst of a hidden scene-change, Monsignor Wicks turns up quite dead very suddenly. Jud has been in town awhile, still just as welcome as when he first arrived, and now decides to saddle himself with the unenviable task of figuring out who killed Wicks.
The list of suspects isn’t terribly short either. Wicks knew, and had dirt on, pretty much everyone in town. In Wicks’ inner circle of devotees we have – Dr. Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), a local town doctor; Lee Ross (Andrew Scott), a best-selling Sci-Fi author; Simone Viviane (Cailee Spaeny), a former concert cellist now stuck in a wheelchair; Vera Draven (Kerry Washington), a tightly-wound lawyer; and Vera’s half-sibling Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), an aspiring politician. And don’t forget Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis), the local police chief who shows up right around the same time Benoit does, and they both get in each-others way as they attempt to investigate Wicks’ death.
Giving anything else away, plot points, clues, spoilers, would do another Knives Out mystery a deep disservice and so we won’t do that. Just know that the confessional, that sacred rite given to priests to let the common person unburden their soul, can be abused by the less scrupulous priesthood too. And most people had a life, a past, that they usually prefer to remain hidden away, before becoming a priest.
Wake Up Dead Man A Knives Out Mystery will enjoy a limited release in theaters and make its streaming debut on Netflix on December 12th, 2025!
Reviewed by Alicia Glass