By Fiorela Gonzales

Rian Johnson’s back with his latest murder mystery, Wake Up Dead Man. This is the third installment in what has now been dubbed the “Knives Out” franchise, as they take the titular character from the original Knives Out film, Daniel Craig’s Southern drawled detective, Benoit Blanc, and place him in yet another impossible mystery. This new installment lives up to its predecessors while being able to stand apart from the original two. This one may be the funniest of the three while also being the darkest and meditative of the three. Plus, this one has Benoit Blanc’s best haircut of all three films.

Though Benoit Blanc is the glue that holds these movies together, this movie is also a little different than the other two as it has a main character above Blanc: Josh O’Connor’s Rev. Jud Duplenticy. Uncharacteristically, this movie also allows almost the first hour to go by without showing you Benoit Blanc. From the top, it’s Rev. Duplenticy’s story and Josh O’Connor commands so much presence by his portrayal of the young and conflicted priest that you can’t help but be enthralled from the beginning. Rev. Duplenticy is a reformed former boxer turned priest whose goal is to bring hope and faith to those around him and help save them from the darkness that had swallowed him as well. So naturally, the film begins with this young priest punching a deacon in the face. This gets him sent to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude to work as an assistant pastor under the parish leader, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks. This is where our story truly starts.

Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, played by Josh Brolin, is all encompassing, strong armed, bigoted, and unstable ruler of this tiny parish in upstate New York. He’s got a few very loyal followers, and he prefers it that way. Newcomers are berated with all levels of hate speech until they leave, ensuring only those in his inner circle get his blessings. And our hero of the story, Rev. Duplenticy, wants him gone. Monsignor Wicks spews hate and division while the young priest tries to preach love and forgiveness to the small group of followers. Rev. Duplenticy’s distaste for Wicks goes viral (due to a character with an endless streaming habit), and thus, he becomes suspect number one when Wicks dies suddenly during a sermon in a small room with no exit. Cue: Benoit Blanc. From here is where all of Rian Johnson’s classic plot twists and turns really start churning out.

Rian Johnson has secured himself as the murder mystery king ever since Knives Out dropped in 2019. The first movie was a fresh surprise with witty banter, fun characters, anti-Trump viewpoints, and cozy sweaters. The next iteration, Glass Onion, was another slam-dunk with what was basically an anti-rich people Scooby Doo movie. This third iteration goes back to its cozy roots of the first movie, with the Scooby Doo antics of the second, the anti-Republican/Trump of both but adds something unexpected and deeper: an introspective meditation on faith and religion. The crux of this happens near the 3rd act when Rev. Duplenticy and Benoit Blanc have just pulled off a gag that left the whole crowd laughing that leads immediately to a conversation with a woman on the phone that left the whole crowd stunned. It’s a conversation that takes Rev. Duplenticy out of the scene so he could speak with this woman and give her the comfort she seeks. Yes, this is a murder mystery with lots of humor, but there’s something deeper in this movie that wasn’t present in the first two, belief in a spiritual journey. Though it’s inevitable that a movie that takes place in a church would touch on these subjects, Johnson handles them with such grace – opening up conversations about faith between the young reformed priest and the older cynical detective that leaves you questioning less about the dead body and more about faith, doubt and humanity.

The third act also drops what has become a telltale of these 3 movies: the out of nowhere reveal that changes the entire trajectory of the story. Though these movies have been dubbed “whodunnits”, Rian Johnson has really created his own genre of movie. A whodunnit gives you the clues throughout so the reader or watcher can solve along with the story. By the time you get to the end, the clues have been laid out enough so that you can figure it out as well. Rian Johnson starts these movies as would be whodunnits but then drops a third act reveal that then makes it impossible for the viewer to have been able to figure out the answer without this bomb of knowledge. And that’s not a criticism of these movies – they just don’t perfectly fit into the whodunnit category. They’re a Rian Johnson creation. My small qualm is not with the third act reveal, but more so in the unfurling of the mystery. This one starts getting a little bit convoluted and confusing. While the first two had third act reveals that amped the mystery, and this one takes it a whole new level where you start losing the strands of the plot a bit.

It’s hard to be mad at the slight confusion, though, when you’re having so much fun watching the film. And not only is it fun to watch, it’s beautiful to watch as well. A lot of recent movies seem to have the same digital sheen to it that all feel as if they came from the same template. This movie feels and looks like a real movie. There were some shots that genuinely took my breath away. Every time the church doors opened, it was its own piece of art. Enough can’t also be said about the coziness of the movie. While Glass Onion was a fun movie, it didn’t have the same feeling of autumn in New England as the original Knives Out movie had. This new movie brings back that feeling tenfold combining it with Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow. It’s almost a Halloween movie.

One thing to be said for Rian Johnson, he’s always had his finger on the trigger on the current political climate. It’s no secret which way his politics lies with the first two movies of this franchise very clearly satirizing the right-wing climate of a Trump administration. The first Knives Out movie was the least subtle (that one had a Nazi child after all), but this installment is the most anti Trump Administration while having less in your face jokes than the first two did. The characters in this movie inhabit a world that we’ve all been living under for almost a decade now that are so specific to this second Trump administration. Johnson has crafted characters that realistically live in this exact month of this exact year in our exact world. It’s almost too in tune with modern times, though. There’s a small DOGE joke in this movie that is already outdated by the time the movie is released with the dissolution of Elon Musk’s DOGE branch of the government.

In the end, Wake Up Dead Man, ends up being a beautifully shot, fun murder mystery that lends itself into an existentialist thought of faith and religion while satirizing the Trump administration. In less capable hands this would be too much to handle, but Johnson takes these unlikely components and blends them seamlessly to create a world that’s as real as the one we all inhabit. Johnson has created his own genre of movies, moving past whodunnits to tell stories that deliver our world on a platter. And sometimes, there’s a head on that platter as well. 

4 stars