He uncovered a sweater-wearing killer at a New England family mansion in Knives Out. He brought his linen bathing suit to solve a murder on a tech oligarch’s Greek island in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. Now, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), the world’s best — and most fashionable — detective, is back for his darkest and most personal case to date in Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. Watch the teaser for the new film above. 

Writer and director Rian Johnson’s third Benoit Blanc film takes the Southern sleuth to a small church in upstate New York, where a goodhearted young priest named Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) has been sent to assist Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin). The charismatic Wicks, who comes from a long line of priests, has culled a devoted congregation comprised of mysterious church lady Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), circumspect groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church), tightly-wound lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington), aspiring politician Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), town doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), bestselling author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott), and concert cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny).  

When an incomprehensible murder takes place in the parish, the congregation is left reeling, prompting local police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis) to join forces with renowned detective Benoit Blanc to unravel a case that defies all logic. “This film charts [Blanc’s] most personal journey yet,” says Johnson. “He’s forced to engage with the case — and with himself — in a way that’s completely new.” Read more about the mystifying case on here. 

“Every time we make one of these films, it’s fun to think, ‘How can this one explore a whole different corner of this genre?’ ” says Johnson, who earned an Oscar nomination for both Knives Out and Glass Onion. Wake Up Dead Man, he explains, took inspiration from John Dickson Carr, a detective fiction author whose books focused on the locked-room mystery. “It’s a side alley of the whodunit genre: the impossible crime. A corpse is found in a locked room, a knife in his back, he is alone, and there are no ways in or out. With such a constrained premise, there are only a few real options to work with. It’s the mystery version of a chess puzzle, with just enough pieces on the board and no more, and a few predetermined moves at your disposal.”

Wake Up Dead Man also follows a long tradition of clerical tales. “[Agatha] Christie’s Murder at the Vicarage is a classic, but my biggest influence for this film was G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries,” says Johnson of his references. “Themes of guilt, mystery, morality, and fallible humanity all feel right at home in a church, with a man of God at the center of the mix.”

Wake Up Dead Man premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and will open the BFI London Film Festival on Oct. 8. Then the film heads to select theaters starting Nov. 26, before landing on Netflix Dec. 12.