After 2019’s brilliant Knives Out and 2022’s flashier follow-up Glass Onion comes a third mystery from the team of writer-director Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig’s genius detective Benoit Blanc.
But before Blanc arrives to steal every scene, Wake Up Dead Man’s focus is on the young priest Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor, taking the title of hottest screen priest from Andrew Scott, who’s standing right there). After an altercation with a rude deacon, Duplenticy is transferred to a small-town church in upstate New York. Here, he’s second-in-command to ‘Monsignor’ Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), a priest who sees himself as a messianic figure but whose aggressive sermons incite division among his congregation. The more compassionate and progressive-minded Duplenticity falls into conflict with Wicks, and so when the inevitable murder occurs, all suspicious fingers point his way. Enter Benoit Blanc.
What follows is, as we’ve come to expect from Knives Out movies, a cracking murder mystery that, despite the series’ longest running time yet at 144 minutes, keeps us on the edge of our seats trying to get one step ahead of the next twist. If there’s any flaw in the plotting, it’s that some of the suspects are lacking in screen time, with A-list cast members including Andrew Scott and Cailee Spaeny underused, which affects our ability to guess whodunnit. But the joy isn’t so much in whodunnit but in how they dunnit, and the puzzle pieces come together very satisfyingly.
As we’ve also come to expect, it’s thoroughly fun too, with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments – Daniel Craig’s clearly having a lot of fun, particularly when Blanc’s passion for musical theatre is revealed. But it’s a darker movie than what’s come before; moody, angry, and worn out with the world. Like the Agatha Christie novels that inspired them were full of topical social critique for their times, the Knives Out movies have always been unforgiving in their portrayals of Trump-era America. This time, not only do Wicks’ divisive sermons bring to mind many notable figures with similar cults of personality, but the twist of the knife is in the sad depiction of the various ways this has radicalised the members of the community; the recently divorced Dr Nat (Jeremy Renner) has been pushed into increasing misogyny, and Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack) is a young and hopeless wannabe politician who wants to be “the golden boy of the GOP” – frankly, we were surprised that the Netflix bigwigs let Johnson get away with the satire being this direct.
And then there’s the exploration of religion in modern society. The ever-logical Blanc declares himself a “proud heretic” and doesn’t hide his distaste at Wicks’ role as part of a long history of preachers spreading hate rather than love, but Duplenticity offers a strong counter-blow, defining his faith as a form of storytelling which provides hope to those who need it. This argument plays out across the film, and feels like a thoughtful development from Johnson, whose The Last Jedi posited the argument that we should move on from old stories when they don’t serve us any more. Like that controversial Star Wars instalment, Wake Up Dead Man ultimately leaves us with a message that despite all the darkness, there is hope – and gives us a rollicking good time at the movies on the way there.
WAKE UP DEAD MAN: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY is in UK cinemas now and comes to Netflix on December 12th.
