When director Rian Johnson introduced the new Knives Out film on the third day of TIFF 2025, he exclaimed: “we’re going back to church.”
By that he meant that Wake Up Dead Man, the latest Benoit Blanc mystery, would harken back to the origins of the whodunit, and in particular the gothic vibes of Edgar Allan Poe. And now that I’ve seen it, I have to say that Johnson pulled it off: the new movie has a darker and more spiritual feel than its predecessors, and yet it’s still distinctly Knives Out, which is to say twisting and hilarious. I gasped a few times, as did the rest of audience, at the many reveals. I’ll have a full review in the coming days, but you can read my initial thoughts below.
In addition to that, I managed to watch a tense German film about the dark side of being an influencer, a Saudi crime thriller with a deflating twist, a hilarious dark comedy about how terrible kids can be, and the best pure action flick I’ve seen in some time. It was a hectic and eclectic day to say the least. (Unfortunately most of these movies don’t currently have premiere dates for a wider audience, but I’ll let you know if that changes.)
And if you missed them, you can read my previous dispatches from this year’s TIFF as well, covering films like Exit 8 and No Other Choice.
Wake Up Dead Man
Benoit Blanc’s (Daniel Craig) third outing is the darkest and most complex yet. It covers a murder in a small church community in New York, as Blanc pairs up with a young priest (Josh O’Connor) and the local sheriff (Mila Kunis) to figure out what’s going on. Of course it’s not so simple; in fact, Blanc constantly calls the case “impossible.” But that complexity allows the film to build up an incredible cascade of twists and turns that seems to just keep going up until reaching a powerfully emotional crescendo. And don’t worry: even though the tone is more dire and serious at times, this also might be the funniest Knives Out has ever been
In select theaters on November 26th, before streaming on Netflix on December 12th.
Image: XYZ Films
The Furious
An absolutely unrelenting and bone-crunching action movie starring Xie Miao and Joe Taslim as two men fighting to take down an underground child-trafficking ring. Each fight sequence is as brutal as it is balletic, and yet there’s an inventiveness and playfulness to it as well. Nearly everything can be part of the choreography, whether it’s duelling with bicycles as if they were swords, or downed foes becoming a human pyramid to climb. If you want an idea of how extra this movie can be, imagine a classic hallway fight just teeming with bad guys, and then add a motorcycle. The final sequence, between five men with different aims, is chaotic, exhausting, and impossible to look away from.
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