"Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery," Rian Johnson's darkest, funniest and best installment yet in his three-film detective series, takes place in a church stunned by two sins. The first is murder. The second is theft: The franchise's star, Southern-fried private investigator Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), has the film stolen from him by a priest, Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor), an ex-boxer with a neck tattoo and a wicked right cross.

The innocent-faced O'Connor excels at crooks and suckers and fittingly, his Jud describes himself as "young, dumb and full of Christ." Jud killed a man as a teenager and, despite years of prayer and patience, still has the temper to threaten his superior, Msgr. Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), to relinquish his tyrannical hold over their upstate New York parish, Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude.

Wicks is a prayer warrior, a cruel Old Testament type who claims God wants him to expel sinners from his services in shame. Fear has radicalized the church's remaining flock. No one wants to get on this mean bear's bad side. Bishop Langstrom (a feisty, good-humored Jeffrey Wright) admits Wicks is "a few beads shy of a full rosary" and has sent the newbie pastor there to prove he can save more souls with honey instead of brimstone.

"By staying put in that pew, a side is taken," Jud insists to the parishioners. Not only do they close ranks against Jud for preaching love instead of hate, they pillory him for it — especially once Wicks is stabbed to death in the middle of Good Friday Mass.

The police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis) is convinced Jud is guilty. Everyone else at that fatal service was a Wicks disciple: novelist Lee (Andrew Scott); doctor Nat (Jeremy Renner); cellist Simone (Cailee Spaeny); groundskeeper Samson (the aptly named Thomas Haden Church); lawyer Vera (Kerry Washington); YouTuber Cy (Daryl McCormack) who uploads videos with titles like "There's G-O-D in DOGE"; and stalwart church lady Martha (Glenn Close) who has served this parish since it was under the firm thumb of Wicks' grandfather.

But as Wicks fell to the floor, Jud was onstage clutching a 6-foot cross and each of the other potential suspects was seated primly in their seats. Pulling off the murder would have taken a miracle.

"A perfectly impossible crime," Blanc says with a grin. "The holy grail."

Blanc will reveal the truth, proclaiming his choice to "kneel at the altar of the rational." He manhandles Wicks' corpse like a marinated steak; to him, it's just meat, no holy vessel. In passing, Blanc alludes to a strained relationship with his own religious mother, which is as much personal backstory as he's willing to confess. Something else seems to have happened to the character between films. His clean-cropped hair has grown out lank and shaggy. A hint of a spiritual crisis?

But by the time Blanc struts in nearly 40 minutes into the film, we've forgotten we've been waiting for the franchise to resurrect its lead. We're already riveted by the showdown between Wicks and Jud. Even after Blanc arrives, he's confounded to find himself occasionally standing on the sidelines, a bystander in Jud's moral crusade to herd his congregation toward righteousness. Innocent or guilty, Jud just isn't that concerned with saving his own neck. He's an unhappy but willing martyr whose heart is slowly breaking the entire time.

The "Knives Out" whodunits are about classic filmmaking delights: smart scripts, sharp jokes and big stars. Johnson wants to usher people who moan that today's movies aren't any good back into his sacred space, the cinema. (Though "Wake Up Dead Man" will be on Netflix in two weeks). He has an entertainer's flair for theatrics and a scholar's devotion to mystery craft, pausing to squeeze in an insert shot of a flyer for the church's book club that also doubles as a syllabus of his literary inspirations for anyone enticed to curl up afterward with a good novel.

The titles on his reading list are all a century old, give or take a decade, and include two Agatha Christies and an Edgar Allan Poe alongside lesser-known treasures like Dorothy L. Sayers' "Whose Body?" and John Dickson Carr's "The Hollow Man." They're standards that "Dead Man" aims to measure up to, as well as templates it wants to subvert. Despite running nearly two-and-a-half hours, it's too speedy to accomplish everything it hopes, but the plotting is a blast, toying with expectations by hurling accusations and confessions at us when we aren't expecting them. Johnson pledges his devotion to tropes like cawing ravens and thunderous rainstorms while giving his various red herrings silly nicknames like "the knife robot" and "the clangy clunk."

Yet the wobble underneath each "Knives Out" entry is that each is a 21st-century societal critique. They aren't constructed to be truly timeless — they speak very much to right-this-second now. The first two films, 2019's "Knives Out" and 2022's "Glass Onion," escalated class warfare from millionaires to billionaires over the years that the world's top 10 richest men doubled their wealth. "Dead Man" takes aim at hypocritical strong men who grandstand on a pulpit. You could call it a parable, except Johnson is more direct than the Bible. Pointedly, one character turns to Wicks and says, "Give me four years, you could be president." (That elbow-to-the-ribs line gets followed by a good "Star Wars" joke for fans who misread Johnson's marvelous 2017 "The Last Jedi.")

The ding on these capers is that there's always too much casting. The actors struggle to register as full characters — they're more like guest stars on "Saturday Night Live." But Close is fantastic as a deeply devout woman who has a habit of popping up when you least expect her, like a mouse from a hole. Her Martha is so naive that she mistakes spray-painted phallic symbols for "rocket ships" and only gets nasty when regaling newcomers with the sordid history of Wicks' mother, Grace (Annie Hamilton), nicknamed the "harlot whore."

The comedic overkill of the insult is on purpose. The script says as much about the church's treatment of women as "Conclave" does. Here, the boys' club (Jud aside) pardons one another's flaws while Martha and Vera shoulder most of the work.

In flashbacks, Hamilton's jezebel bursts through the chapel's wooden doors with an oversize blood moon looming behind her, Johnson and cinematographer Steve Yedlin embracing the chance to get more gothic than the sun-bleached "Glass Onion." Much of the action takes place inside Perpetual Fortitude's stony walls but cleverly, the weather outside shifts along with the mood. A golden shaft of light may stream through the stained glass windows; seconds later, an unseen cloud passes by, casting a chill across the bricks.

The camera moves with purpose, flinging itself to the floor when one character gets body slammed and reeling when another is punched straight in the POV. Meanwhile Nathan Johnson's score of scratchy cellos and foreboding horns pairs well with a dramatic burst of organ music — one of many goofy-great jump scares goosed up by the editor Bob Ducsay.

While O'Connor's priest lands plenty of his own solid punchlines, his sincerity gives the film heft. His absolute commitment to his character — Johnson gives him room to deliver a real performance — allows this "Knives Out" to merge its throwback charms with modern provocations.

It's probably a coincidence that O'Connor was 33 years old when he was cast in the role, the same age that Jesus Christ was crucified. But it does seem like this impassioned crowd-pleaser is asking how many Christians would recognize Jesus if he walked among us today — and if today's church would still thank their savior for purging it of scoundrels.

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'WAKE UP DEAD MAN: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY'

MPA rating: PG-13 (for violent content, bloody images, strong language, some crude sexual material, and smoking)

Running time: 2:24

How to watch: In theaters Nov. 26, on Netflix Dec. 12

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