Why Knives Out 3 features Benoit Blanc’s toughest challenge yet

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery revolves around a type of whodunnit that’s new to Benoit Blanc in the movies, and provides the gentleman detective with his most challenging case yet.

The first Knives Out movie concerned the death of a famous author in his sprawling Massachusetts mansion, while sequel Glass Onion involved a pair of murders on a Greek island.

As written and directed by Rian Johnson, both movies leaned into classic whodunnit tropes, including an isolated location, a disparate group of suspects, a will or fortune at stake, a healthy dose of social satire, red herrings deigned to throw us off the scent, and flashbacks that feed into the dramatic reveal.

The movies also feature an eccentric detective in the shape of Benoit Blanc, and in third movie Wake Up Dead Man, he’s investigating a classic type of whodunnit that has its roots in the 19th century.

A brief history of the “locked room mystery”

The Knives Out 3 trailer dropped today, and features Benoit Blanc calling the murder at the heart of the story a “classic impossible crime.” That’s another name for what aficionados call “a locked room mystery,” which is a type of whodunnit that’s been around since the genre began.

It consists of a murder being committed in a single location – usually a room with little more than a ceiling, a floor, and four walls – where it’s impossible to enter, carry out the crime, and depart undetected.

A famous early example is Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ in which a grisly double murder confuses and confounds the police, for good reason, as it turns out they were committed by an orangutan. Which admittedly was a bit of a cheat.

Arthur Conan Doyle tried his hand at the sub-genre, giving Sherlock Holmes two ultimate crimes to solve via ‘The Adventure of the Speckled Band’ and ‘The Adventure of the Empty House.’

John Dickson Carr became known as the master of this specific art, and his 1935 novel ‘The Hollow Man’ was voted best locked room mystery of all time by a panel of crime writers.

In it, a professor is shot to death in his own study, but neither killer nor weapon are found by the secretary stationed outside his room. Though we aren’t giving that one away here, so to find out whodunnit, you’ll have to read the book…

Why Knives Out 3 features “the impossible crime”

Knives Out 3 sees Monsignor Jefferson Wicks completing a sermon in his church, heading into a nearby room, and winding up dead just moments later.

Here’s how Benoit Blanc describes the mystery in the Wake Up Dead Man trailer: “To understand this case, we need to look at the myth that’s being constructed. A man gives a sermon. He then, in plain sight of everyone, walks into a sealed concrete box. And 30 seconds later, that man is lying dead.”

He ends his speech by calling it “a classic impossible crime,” suggesting Blanc knows this mystery’s place in whodunnit history, as well as the difficulty of the challenge ahead.

Wake Up Dead Man – A Knives Out Mystery hits cinemas on November 28 before streaming on Netflix from December 12. For more intrigue, check out the best thrillers on Netflix right now, plus where to watch Rian Johnson’s best mystery movie.