LONDON: The latest Knives Out movie may be another whodunit but the expanding franchise’s creator insists he also wanted to confront the current US political climate with the star-studded film.

“It’s hard for it not to be in your mind,” writer and director Rian Johnson said as Wake Up Dead Man opened the London Film Festival on Wednesday after premiering in Toronto last month.

“We tried to not shy away from that,” he added, noting his latest Daniel Craig-led murder mystery was “unapologetically set and tuned into this moment” in the United States.

The film, showing for the first time outside North America, features a charismatic tyrannical monsignor, played by Josh Brolin, holding sway over a devoted and dysfunctional congregation.

He is challenged by another priest (Josh O’Connor), who is accused of being a PINO: a Priest in Name Only, playing on the “Republican in Name Only” slur beloved by the US President Donald Trump and his supporters. Taking swings at conspiracy theorists, and with characters delivering lines like “what is truth?”, the battle lines drawn by Trumpian politics are apparent on-screen throughout.

Johnson, a one-time evangelical, said he chose to set the movie in small-town upstate New York and its church after seeing his former faith increasingly collide with politics and cultural issues under Trump.

“It’s something that I think popular culture and movies that are meant to be entertainment are sometimes very afraid to engage with,” he argued.

The now-trilogy of Knives Out whodunits are loosely inspired by Agatha Christie’s novels and other works from the so-called golden age of detective fiction a century ago.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2025