A Priestly Surprise in a Locked Room Mystery

It’s been about three years since Rian Johnson last released a Benoit Blanc mystery, the 2022, COVID-era set Glass Onion, and it’s fair to say that the audience was more than ready for another film in this series. The first two films, both Glass Onion and its predecessor, Knives Out, are beloved films that are constantly raised as some of the best mystery films of the current century (if not of all time). Rian Johnson clearly understands the genre well, and also has deep love and respect for the stories, films, and tropes of the mystery format. If Johnson says he’s working on another film in the series, people will show up for it.

Wake Up Dead Man is the third film in the series, released on Netflix as part of their two-picture deal with Johnson for Knives Out sequels (which was made at a time when the director wasn’t even sure if cinemas would survive the pandemic). It is, once again, a reinvention of the mystery genre, taking a story style that is well worn (in this case, the “locked room mystery”) and turning it into a case perfectly suited for lead character Benoit Blanc (once again played by Daniel Craig). It has all the hallmarks of the director’s style for this series: fast dialogue, an intricate story, and an interweaving of tension and laughs to create a mystery just about everyone can enjoy.

It is, though, also a different kind of beast from the previous two films. Each movie can stand on its own without the need for you to have seen the others. Heck, with the way these films are set, you could effectively view them in any order and they’d stand up on their own. But where the first two films were really about bickering families dealing with past trauma and deep, dark secrets (because the friend group that was the center of Glass Onion was just another kind of family), Wake Up Dead Man deals with a very different group of suspects, and this gives this third adventure a very different vibe from its predecessors.

The movie focuses on Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor), a former boxer turned Catholic priest, dealing with a murder in his church. He worked under Msgr. Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), a bitter and foul-mouthed older man, and the two did not get along. Jud simply wants to make the church open and inviting for the parishioners while Wicks seemed more interested in sowing anger and feeding the egos of a small group of powerful people – Jeremy Renner as town doctor Nat Sharp; Kerry Washington as the town lawyer Vera Draven, Esq.; Daryl McCormack as her son, Cy Draven, an aspiring politician; Andrew Scott as best-selling author Lee Ross; Cailee Spaeny as disabled former concert cellist Simone Vivane; and Glenn Close as Martha Delacroix, Wick’s right hand woman – who make up his congregation.

Tensions mount between the two men until Good Friday when, during Mass, Wicks ends up dead in a closet, seemingly stabbed to death with no one around that could have done it. The murder is quite the mystery, but everyone points their fingers at Jud since he was the first to see the body. Called in by local police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis), Blanc isn’t so sure. He finds a lot to intrigue him about this case, but he doesn’t think that Jud is the likely suspect. This all has a foul air to it, too neat and tidy of a locked room mystery for it to be as it seems. But to find the true suspects, and to solve this murder, Blanc is going to have to dig deep and, just maybe, take a few things on faith.

Like the other Benoit Blanc mysteries, there’s far more going on in Wake Up Dead Man than it seems at first blush, even with the film effectively opening on a locked room mystery. At two hours and 24 minutes, this is the longest film in the series yet, and Johnson uses that time to inform us of Jud’s background, Wicks’s background, the story of Wick’s family and their church, and even a stolen inheritance that, just maybe, sits at the center of this whole mystery. Of course, to dig into all that Blanc has to first dig through a lot of other material and learn all about the various suspects that are at play in this story.

On that front, I think this film may have the least important cast of any of the films so far. Jud and Wicks are the focal points, each of whom are deeply fleshed out into interesting, living characters (even with Wicks dying in the first act, which isn’t a spoiler since it was in the trailer). In comparison to these two, the other characters – the doctor, the lawyer, the politician, the musician, the writer, and the church lady – all feel far less nuanced and interesting. Take this in comparison to the Thrombey family from Knives Out or the Disruptors in Glass Onion. Those films spent a lot of time getting into each and every suspect, making them all feel alive, while Wake Up Dead Man doesn’t seem nearly as concerned about it at all.

That’s really because this film is Jud’s story, even more so than it is Blanc’s. Jud is the lead character, and while the mystery is our way into the story it’s not really our focus. What matters most to this film, above all else, is faith. Jud’s is shaken by Wicks and his congregation of powerful people, and then it’s further hammered by the murder and everyone turning on him. He just wants to be a good priest, to have someone believe in him while he, in turn, searches for something to believe in. Christ is his life, but his faith has been shaken and he needs to find himself again, as a priest and a Catholic, to be able to carry on.

Normally I wouldn’t be much for a storyline like this, but Wake Up Dead Man does a good job of finding ways to balance the religious part of the story with other elements. In part it succeeds by having Jud play off of Blanc, a man with no religious affiliation who thinks God is just another myth, much like so many others. The two working together gives the film a fun back and forth, and interplay of ideas that keeps the story from getting too religious or heavy.

But it also relies heavily on Josh O’Connor, who does a great job imbuing Jud with life. Even if you don’t ascribe to his religion (which I don’t) the film still finds a way to make you appreciate him as a person. He believes in what he’s doing, and he’s not out there to spray fire and brimstone but to honestly help people. He cares, and that does a lot to get you invested in his character. His path guides the film and you want to see him come away cleared of the charges and freed of the burden because he’s a good person in a bad place. That makes the movie far more interesting than it would have been otherwise.

Still, I do think this one is not going to be for everyone. I liked it a lot, but it is a very different beast from the other films. It has the same bones – a richly detailed mystery with plenty of twists and turns, populated by an all-star cast – but it goes about its mystery solving in a very different way. Those looking for another Knives Out or Glass Onion may be disappointed that this isn’t the same exact kind of film. I think that’s to the film’s benefit, though, because you can only get the same movie so many times before it starts to get stale.

Johnson doesn’t like to even approach being stale. He reinvents, both within his mysteries and within his career as a whole. He is not a writer-director content with doing the same old things. It could have been easy for Wake Up Dead Man to be just another Knives Out mystery. Johnson swerved and I think it makes for a stronger film. I like all three and I appreciate how the films are evolving. Whether it works for you may just come down to your expectations for this film and whether you want more of the same or something that feels different and new.