Knives Out 3 director Rian Johnson keeps raising his difficulty level

Watching Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, the third film in the Knives Out detective series, it’s hard to escape the notion that writer-director Rian Johnson is playing his career on hard mode. The series’ previous movies, Knives Out and Glass Onion, wrap murder mysteries around pointed messages about class elitism, wealth inequity, and the myth of America’s meritocracy. Similarly, Wake Up Dead Man isn’t just a satisfyingly complicated, twist-packed murder mystery — it’s a potentially polarizing story about faith in God, the real value of religion, and the threatening power a church leader can have over a community.