Culture
‘Wake Up Dead Man’ will restore your faith in the whodunit
By: Gordon Briggs
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I love a good whodunit.
The idea of a dead body, an isolated location, and a room full of potential suspects, all played by a gang of talented actors, has always appealed to me. This time, I want you to imagine Agatha Christie crossed with an Umberto Eco story, and you get Wake Up Dead Man, an enjoyable whodunit, and another solid entry into the Knives Out series. What’s different this time isn’t just the setting, it’s how the film engages with questions of faith.
Here, Detective Benoit Blanc investigates the seemingly impossible murder of a powerful and radical priest, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, in a small rural church. You can enjoy the movie purely on its merits as a mystery. The cast is a solid collection of memorable suspects (Glenn Close and Josh Brolin, in particular, had my attention from the jump), and the script has a farcical energy that always keeps things moving. What’s different is how this mystery uses its detective.
Something I always dig about this series is how Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc may be the headliner, but he isn’t really the main character. Rather, this revolves around a captivating turn by Josh O’Connor, a priest struggling with his faith who finds himself a suspect in a murder at a local church. Like many Rian Johnson stories, this film revolves around a character wrestling with deep feelings of guilt.
Wake Up Dead Man is the third installment in a series of murder mysteries built around Craig’s perceptive detective Benoit Blanc. The original movie Knives Out wasn’t just an Agatha Christie-inspired whodunit; it uses a mystery plot to examine the American class system. Its follow-up, Glass Onion, took on a different mystery surrounding a new aristocracy of corrupt social media influencers. Each film shows how power, whether it’s from generational wealth or from social media, is a corrupting influence. With Wake Up Dead Man, we examine how religious power can be a corrupting force.
That choice adds a spiritual element to the story, distinguishing it from the previous installments. A different movie would’ve had the church just be a moody setting for murder. Thankfully, the filmmakers take their characters’ questions regarding faith seriously. That religious angle creates a story in which ideas like belief, evidence, and finding the “truth” take on both criminal and spiritual significance.
The film is currently playing at the Athena Cinema, but will be available on Netflix later this month. If you enjoy a good mystery, please seek it out. Rating: ★ ★★ ½