Catholic priest Father Jud is sent to a small town, where the local preacher, Monsignor Wicks, leads his flock in a stern, Old Testament style. Wicks constant needling of Jud fosters animus between them... so when Wicks is murdered, Jud seems the obvious suspect. But the odd "locked room mystery" circumstances of the death attract the interest of detective Benoit Blanc, who discovers motives for murder all throughout the congregation.
Rian Johnson has been on quite a mystery tour of late, not only with Knives Out, but with the superb television series Poker Face. Wake Up Dead Man is the first Benoit Blanc movie to arrive after Poker Face, so it's possible that the way I received this new movie has been altered by the experience of 22 episodes with Natasha Lyonne. I do feel there are three key ingredients in the Knives Out recipe: a twisty murder plot, a large ensemble cast of big actors there to play, and a dash of social commentary. The ingredients are all there in Wake Up Dead Man, but I feel like the measurements have been substantially tweaked.
Knives Out was woven through with "upstairs-downstairs" commentary about class and means. Glass Onion turned up the heat on the rich even more. But Wake Up Dead Man is (almost) mainly about its religiously-themed message. It has a lot of ground to cover about organized religion vs. faith, the kind of people who wield religion for their own personal aggrandizement, and in particular how these issues intersect with Catholicism. The subject is ripe for a takedown, and I have no problem with this franchise putting another lever of power in the spotlight with this movie.
But I think it comes at the expense of that second aspect of the Knives Out formula: the ensemble cast of big actors. Oh, they're here, to be sure: Josh O'Connor is far more the lead than Daniel Craig, and he's surrounded and supported by Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Thomas Haden Church, and Jeffrey Wright. But where the first two Knives Out movies were full of fun characters I could see actors lining up to portray, I just don't feel there's much juice to be squeezed from most of the people in this story. Where Knives Out and Glass Onion seemed to offer everyone at least one moment to chew the scenery, Wake Up Dead Man feels almost disinterested in developing many of its characters -- to a degree where people seem like suspects only because they're portrayed by someone famous.
The effort that might have been spent on characterization goes instead to developing the mystery. Wake Up Dead Man has by far the most convoluted plot of the three Benoit Blanc mysteries. To explain how would probably give too much away -- and such pains were taken to hide the truth that I'd feel monstrous to spoil it. I'll just say that you'll probably enjoy the movie more if you don't expend much mental effort trying to solve "whodunnit" and just go along for the ride.
All of that probably sounds like I didn't enjoy Wake Up Dead Man very much -- but that's not at all the case. Really, it's that the prior two movies set a rather high bar for entertainment, and I feel that you really have to get into the weeds to differentiate and rank them. This movie has plenty of laugh out loud moments, a few triumphant monologues, some wonderful visual imagery, and an especially great performance from Josh O'Connor. It's enjoyable. I just enjoyed it less than Knives Out or Glass Onion. And it's possible, if I'd not been hearing about critics praising this as possibly the best Knives Out movie, that coming without heightened expectations wouldn't have soured the experience at all.
As it stands, I give Wake Up Dead Man a B. It's well worth watching, especially if you've liked either of the previous movies. But if you've heard any of the hype, maybe tamp it down a bit.
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