How Rian Johnson’s Reckoning With Faith Led to ‘Wake Up Dead Man’

Director Rian Johnson has always treated genre as a set of tools rather than a destination. With Wake Up Dead Man, the third film in his Knives Out series, those tools are still sharp — the clockwork plotting, the sprawling ensemble and Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc orbiting the mess like a curious moon — but the engine driving them is unusually personal. This time, Johnson isn’t dismantling wealth or celebrity. He’s turning the mystery inward, toward the faith he grew up with and never fully esca