Where was ‘Knives Out 3’ filmed? Discover the ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ filming locations
Wake up, Knives Out fans, because the third film in this whodunnit franchise—Wake Up, Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery—began streaming on Netflix today.
Written and directed by Rian Johnson, Knives Out 3 takes viewers in a totally new direction. The first film, released in theaters in 2019, took us to a cozy mansion in New England. The second film, Glass Onion—released by Netflix in 2022—took us on a sunny boat ride to a fabulous Greek island. Now, Wake Up, Dead Man is taking viewers to church. Just like Hozier wanted!
Wake Up, Dead Man stars Josh O’Connor, as a young, naive, and kind-hearted priest named Rev. Jud Duplenticy, who is sent to work at a church in a small town with an eccentric, hot-headed head priest (Josh Brolin). When a mystery death occurs among the flock, it brings Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc to town, who works alongside Jud to solve this unsolvable crime. Also starring Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, and Thomas Haden Church, Wake Up Dead Man has a darker tone than the first two films, and part of that is thanks to the gothic setting: an upstate New York Catholic church.
But in fact, Wake Up, Dead Man did not film in New York state, or even the United States. Read on to learn more about the Wake Up, Dead Man filming locations.
Where was Knives Out 3 filmed?
Knives Out 3 was filmed, for the most part, in London, England and the surrounding area. For the exterior church scenes and the surrounding cemetery, the production filmed at the High Beach Holy Innocents Church in Epping Forest in Essex, just a few miles outside of London.
In an interview for the Wake Up, Dead Man production notes, production designer Rick Heinrichs explained that “it was devilishly hard to find a church [in England] that didn’t look at least several centuries too old for a U.S. church. In the research of American churches though, I did find a tradition of neo-Gothic/Victorian age, mid-19-century American churches that overlapped with a few of the candidate UK churches that we had identified.”
Ultimately, the team chose the Holy Innocents Church. “Besides checking the plausibility
box, it had a storybook-like charm in its arboreal setting within an old graveyard that seemed to support Rian’s intent,” Heinrich explained.
The church’s interior was a set on a sound stage, built entirely from scratch by the film crew. In the same interview for the press notes, Heinrich explained that “We wanted to make the audience feel like they were inside that exterior church. That church’s real interior was too
small for the job it needed to do.” Heinrich added that real church’s interior was “disappointingly bland.”
So Heinrich and his team built the church’s interior, complete with special lighting rigs on the windows to allow for sunlight to shine through at key moments in the narrative. The team also carved that distinctive ambo shaped like the tip of a ship, where Monsignor Wicks delivers his sermons, in a nod to Orson Welles depiction of Father Mapple preaching from a ship’s prow pulpit in the 1956 film Moby Dick.
There are a few establishing shots in the film that were caught where the movie takes place, in upstate New York state. According to a 2024 local news report, the Wake Up Dead Man production was seen filming in the Putnam County village of Cold Spring, NY. Specific Cold Spring locations include Fair Street at the intersection with Main Street, Fair Street between Northern Avenue to Route 9D, North Street, and in front of Cold Spring Pizza.
So there you have it! Wake Up Dead Man may be an American movie, but, for the most part, it was filmed in England. Why? Probably for tax break reasons!
