Before the premiere screening of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery at the Toronto International Film Festival, director Rian Johnson warned that it wasn’t going to be exactly like the previous two installments of the franchise.
“We’re going back to church,” he said.
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The new film from Johnson is a bit of a swerve from 2019’s Knives Out and 2022’s Glass Onion. Whereas Knives Out was cozy and Glass Onion had a glamorous, eat-the-rich vacation sheen, Wake Up Dead Man is a retreat into the gothic. It’s still quite funny, but more malevolent in spirit with serious musings about the meaning of faith. It also lets Daniel Craig’s beloved southern sleuth Benoit Blanc take a back seat. Here’s what to expect from the film, which will get a theatrical release in November before hitting Netflix on Dec. 12.
Read more: 15 Whodunnits to Watch After Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
What’s the set up?
Wake Up Dead Man is centered around a Catholic parish in the fictional town of Chimney Rock in upstate New York called Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude. That’s where our narrator Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) is sent after he punches a deacon at his previous posting. Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude is run by the virulent and mischievous Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin). (In his first confession to Jud, Wicks talks about his constant masturbating.) Wicks inherited the church from his grandfather, who shamed Jefferson’s mother calling her a “harlot whore.” Father Jud and Monsignor Wicks immediately clash: Jud sees faith as redemptive, having turned to it after causing the death of a fellow boxer in his youth, while Wicks uses shame in his preaching. Wicks also has a loyal group of followers, who hang on his every word. And then, of course, a murder happens on Good Friday, causing Benoit Blanc to enter the scene.
Who are the suspects?
Naturally, there is once again an all-star cast of potential killers. O’Connor’s Jud and Brolin’s dueling priests are in the mix, but there are also a host of Wicks devotees. Glenn Close is immediately creepy as Martha, who has been a servant of Perpetual Fortitude since she was a young girl and now wears all black and does the church’s filing. She is adored by Samson, the loyal groundskeeper, played by Thomas Haden Church. Then there are Wicks’ groupies. Jeremy Renner is Nat Sharp, a doctor whose wife left him, and in whom Wicks encouraged a burgeoning misogyny. Kerry Washington is Vera Draven, a lawyer whose father was close with Wicks. Her father also burdened her with looking after his illegitimate son Cy (Daryl McCormack), a wannabe GOP star who will spout any rhetoric to get ahead. Andrew Scott is hilarious as Lee Ross, a once beloved sci-fi writer who moved to this remote corner to get away from the “liberal hivemind.” Finally, Cailee Spaeny plays a prodigious cellist wracked with chronic pain. She turns to Wick thinking he can grant her a miracle.
How does Benoit Blanc figure in?
Blanc is called into town to solve the murder, but the film quickly becomes a two-hander between Craig and O’Connor. In fact, Blanc has a smaller part to play than he does in any of the previous installments. If anything, Wake Up Dead Man is O’Connor’s movie. Blanc largely stands on the sidelines as Father Jud drives the action. And it’s his moral journey with which Johnson’s script is preoccupied. He is a man who earnestly believes in his faith, yet has deeply recognizable struggles with anger and hatred. Whereas Wicks uses fear to manipulate, Jud recognizes how humans need belief as solace. Yes, Blanc helps solve the mystery, but the character you care about above all is Father Jud.
What are its influences?
During his introduction, Johnson explained that Wake Up Dead Man pays tribute to a hero of the mystery genre: Edgar Allan Poe. Later, in a post-screening Q&A, Johnson acknowledged his debt to the Father Brown mysteries by G. K. Chesterton. “I think it’s a really great kind of peanut butter and chocolate fit, the notions of human grace and fallibility and all of those things in the murder mystery genre,” he said. The movie itself also provides a syllabus of sorts. Blanc specifically acts out moments from John Dickson Carr’s The Hollow Man to illustrate the impossibility of the crime. That is on a parishioners’ book club reading list that also includes a number of titles by Agatha Christie, a frequent touchstone for these films.
Why this swerve?
Wake Up Dead Man is a little less breezy than the other Knives Out films, drawing its audience into genuine meditations on why humans choose to dedicate themselves to religion. At the Q&A, Johnson said that at the London premiere of Glass Onion he and Craig started discussing how it would be fun to do something for their third collaboration “with this darker tone and something a little more grounded.” It’s an attempt to show the range of these films, though this is perhaps the last one for a while. Netflix bought only two sequels to Knives Out in its 2021 $450 million deal. In July, Johnson told Rolling Stone that he doesn’t have an idea for a fourth in his head, but “I would keep doing them as long as I can.”