(RNS) — The first two films of Rian Johnson’s Benoit Blanc mystery trilogy, “Knives Out” and “Glass Onion,” are masterfully twisty, broadly comic whodunits populated by tech billionaires, venal politicians, fashionistas and spoiled old-money family members. The latest, “Wake Up Dead Man,” examines the spiritual battle in contemporary American Christianity as well as one man’s personal struggle on the essence of faith itself.
That man, the personality at the movie’s core, is Johnson himself.
Before he was nominated for an Oscar for each of the first two movies in the trilogy, before directing acclaimed episodes of “Breaking Bad” and writing and directing “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” Johnson was a practicing Christian.
“I was very deeply, personally Christian,” said Johnson, who was raised in churches in Denver before moving to California when he was 11. “My relationship with Christ was the lens I frame the world through, through my childhood, my teenage years, into my early 20s.”
His new film, “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” arriving in theaters Wednesday (Nov. 26) and on Netflix Dec. 12, returns him to that formative terrain with a star-studded cast including Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner and Kerry Washing …