'Knives Out' Production Designer Rick Heinrichs Crafts the Perfect Crime Scene Once Again
Interiors
TSS Talent
Rick Heinrichs
Interiors
TSS Talent
Rick Heinrichs
A mansion, a Mediterranean island, and now a menacing neo-Gothic church—production designer Rick Heinrichs’ settings have become the backbone of the “Knives Out” mysteries.
From a grand mansion in Massachusetts to a sparkling, impractical glass compound perched on a private Mediterranean island, the locations—or crime scenes—of “Knives Out” have always been central to deciphering the puzzles writer-director Rian Johnson lays out for audiences. Their importance is more pronounced than ever in the third film, “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Story.” Set in Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, a neo-Gothic church nestled in a bucolic—but insular—community in upstate New York, this new location “really sets the tone for the whole piece,” Rick Heinrichs, production designer, tells Set Set.
“It's in the forest, so there is a storybook-like quality to it. We were intentionally going for that,” Heinrichs says of the Holy Innocents Church in Epping Forest, London, where the church’s exterior scenes were filmed. “That's something that Rian brought up at the very beginning.”
The real myth-making, however, happens inside. The church’s interior was constructed on a soundstage at Leavesden Studios just outside of London. According to Heinrich, the layout and iconography reflect the worldview of Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), the bible-thumping, bullying church leader who has cultivated a cult-like following among his congregation. “This is Monsignor Wicks’ domain,” Heinrich says. “His character is imbued in it.”
Actor Josh Brolin as a monsignor in "Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery." Photo: John Wilson / Netflix.
Pointing to the stone statues of angels weilding swords and trumpets above the congregation, Heinrich adds, “It's always this carrot and stick thing with faith in terms of the congregation. You want to inspire them to believe, and you want to inspire fear in them of what will befall them if they are not people of faith.”
Ironically, those same angels foreshadow Wicks’ death, igniting the film’s central mystery. In the moments leading up to his seemingly inexplicable demise inside a locked room, a shot is framed to show one statue, its sword mid-swing above the church leader’s head.
Another key feature of the church is the stark contrast between the gleaming white marble sanctuary at the front of the church reserved for the priests, and the nave, which is built from grey and dark stone. Heinrichs says he was inspired by real-life church sanctuaries, which are often “more refined looking” than the congregation area, though never as dramatically different as in Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude.
“I was looking for the sanctuary to feel heavenly, essentially, and that there was a combination of the windows above shedding light into the space, the faceted curvature of the space, and the [refined marble] finishes in there,” Heinrich says. The visual juxtaposition, he notes, mirrors the film’s thematic divide between “good and evil” and the two opposing interpretations of faith: Wicks’ belief that Christians should be at war with the world versus Reverend Jud Duplenticy’s (Josh O’Connor) philosophy of embracing it. Jud’s hopeful view of religion and humanity, of course, also clashes with detective Benoit Blanc’s (Daniel Craig) own mindset.
These conflicts form the true story of “Wake Up Dead Man,” beneath the whodunit surface—a reflection of Johnson's own evolving relationship with faith and the wider debate over the role of the Christian church in contemporary life, Heinrichs says. “This is a deeply personal thing for him,” he adds. “And it's manifesting itself in the issues that are at play in ‘Wake Up Dead Man.’”
