(This article contains spoilers for Knights in the Back: From the Dead)
No one expected this in 2019 rian johnson, The manager was upset star wars He attracted his fans The last jedi (2018), would glorify the ‘crime’ genre with daggers in the back, Update on the Agatha Christie mysteries that locked Hollywood’s elite in a Boston mansion: Daniel Craig As much detective as it is entertaining, Ana de Armas steals the show and Chris Evans dresses up as a scoundrel, among many others.
The film was one of the most innovative, entertaining and revelatory films of the year. It crept into awards season and with its success, an entire world was created around the character of the eccentric detective. Benoit Blanc (Craig). In 2022, with the franchise in hand netflix, The sequel has arrived Daggers in the Back: The Secret of the Glass Onion, Who replaced the greedy family with a group of overprotective friends who met again in Greece (Kate Hudson, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe), now Blanc faces his third case.
Daggers in the back: from the dead, Written and directed by Johnson, he dries up the Mediterranean salt, packs his bags, and heads to a small town in upstate New York where a murder is taking place in a church. This is the most gothic and dark stakes in this “Murder Mystery” saga, close to Edgar Allan Poe, as Craig surrounds himself with other Hollywood luminaries like Josh O’Connor, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Kerry Washington or Andrew Scott.
Benoit Blanc faces the most dangerous and difficult case of his career, a mystery that begins when a young priest, Jude Duplantis (O’Connor), is sent to Chimney Rock, New York, to work as an assistant to Monsignor Jefferson Weeks (Brolin), a surprisingly courageous priest with a violent rhetoric that is inconsistent with his practical practices.
Weeks has a group of parishioners who worship him like a god: Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), a religious assistant who has served the church all her life; Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church), maintenance man; Attorney Vera Draven (Washington); Aspiring politician and influencer Cy Draven (Darryl McCormack); divorced doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner); Science fiction writer Lee Ross (Scott); and cellist Simon Vivan (Cayley Spaeny).
They all find themselves involved in a murder that seems impossible to solve. Police Chief Geraldine Scott (Kunis) seeks help from the famous detective Benoit Blanc. The film, which has just arrived in theaters (it will be available on Netflix starting December 12), has an ending full of revelations and twists in the scenario: we analyze the ending that leads us to the identity of the criminal.
“Daggers in the Back 3”: what happens in the film
Of the dead It follows a similar structure to the first Daggers in the back: We have a “family”, a patriarch (or shepherd) who dies under strange circumstances, a character out of the condemned heart, and a flock of lost sheep. In this case, the murdered person Benoit has to deal with is Monsignor Weeks, Judd’s alleged accuser, and the suspects are the rest of the characters desperate for his miracle.
It should be noted that Weeks and Jude share two opposing ways of understanding religion, which generates a lot of friction between them: while for the young man faith is a means of healing, for Weeks it is a weapon of attack.
Weeks’ murder occurred on Easter Sunday, during the celebration of Good Friday Mass. The priest goes to an adjacent room, small and closed, to drink from the flask he hides there. By the time Jude looked into the small room for him, he was already lying on the floor with the demon’s head stuck to his back.
Benoit joins the film after 40 minutes of footage and teams up with Judd, nicknamed the “Killer Priest”, who just wants to prove his innocence. The case becomes more complicated when Weeks appears to have awakened from the dead and left the shrine where he was buried, and Judd, who witnessed the escape, appears to have accidentally killed Samson. Dr. Nat soon joins the list of victims. What happened here? Why this sudden bloodbath? Not even Benoit Blanc seems to have the answer…
“Daggers in the Back 3”: Explanation of the ending
At a final meeting in the church with everyone involved in the crime, when Jude was about to turn himself in to the police over Samson’s death, Blanc took the pulpit to reveal what had happened. Or rather, forcing those responsible to confess their sins.
Let’s start at the beginning, because this crime is complicated. Weeks’ grandfather swallowed his entire diamond fortune years ago so that his daughter, whom he considered liberal, would not enjoy it. Thus, he had the money locked up in his shrine, a fact that only Martha had known since she had seen him do it when she was a child.
Martha ends up confessing this secret to Weeks, who decides to come up with a plan to get the diamond back. The priest intends to leave the church and devote himself to sharing the wealth with his recently recovered son, Sai. To do this, he plans a fake death that will allow him entry into the shrine. With Dr. Nat’s help, he faked his death, but Martha intervened and replaced Weeks’ body with that of her partner, Samson, so that the priest could not obtain the diamonds. Weeks ends up dying in Nat’s basement and Samson impersonates him to fake his resurrection.
Dr. Nat, who wants to recover the diamonds for his wife, kills Samson as soon as he leaves the shrine, before Judd meets him. That’s when Martha visited Nat and killed him. This is what the woman, Jude, confessed to him before committing suicide with poison. We have two criminals involved in the plot, Nat and Martha, and four bodies.
Eventually, the diamond containing Weeks’ grandfather’s fortune ends up in the hands of Judd, who repairs the church. Months later, the young priest met Benoit at the reopening of the temple, which now contained a statue of the crucifixion of Jesus. Where are the diamonds? Jude denies knowing its existence, but the camera shows us that he hid it in the middle of the statue, in the place where Jesus’ heart is.
Johnson admitted that this was the most difficult script he had ever written. It is undoubtedly one of the most complex works, but it contains plots common to the genre, such as body swapping, and makes use of ambiguity to think about the meaning of religion and faith in today’s society. This almost impossible crime has been solved, so will there be a fourth case to continue challenging Benoit Blanc’s cognitive skills?