Wake Up, Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

Spoilers, naturally.

My expectations for 2025's WAKE UP, DEAD MAN, the third in Rian Johnson's KNIVES OUT series, were fairly low.  The original was a nice neo-Agatha Christie mystery.  The next, GLASS ONION, was a long in tooth disappointment.  But inspiration seems to have struck the writer/director.  Setting this one in a Catholic church not only provides an atmospheric backdrop, but allows for some pointed observations of faith versus rationality.  And an absorbing mystery, kinda why you watch movies like this, no?

Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor) is reassigned to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude after knocking out a deacon in his parish.  He is a former boxer who once killed a man in the ring.  This will naturally make him a man of interest when Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), the Monsignor Jud is assigned to assist, dies during a Good Friday service.  Murdered, found in a storage closet near the pulpit, stabbed in the back with a knife with a devil's head atop it.  

The police, led by Chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis) are stumped.  Enter Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), our dear detective who quickly realizes what a baffler this one is.  Even when the evidence points firmly at Jud, who had thrown that devil's head (a bar lamp adornment) through the church window one night in anger.  Who was caught on video saying Wicks was like a cancer that needed to be removed.  You see, the Monsignor was rather controversial. So much so that only a handful of parishioners remain...

1. Dr. Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), the local doctor who wife blew town with their children.

2. Lee Ross (Andrew Scott), once a best selling author struggling to stay relevant.

3. Vera Draven (Kerry Washington), high powered attorney who lives with her adopted son Cy (Daryl McCormack), a failed politician.

4. Simone Viviane (Cailee Spaeny), a handicapped former concert cellist.

All suspects of course.  Additionally there are Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), Wicks' devoted assistant and Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church), groundskeeper.  All have plenty of secrets.  Some that wouldn't feel out of place in a soap opera.  But Johnson and the cast play it with style and class.  All were excellent.  While the killer isn't too difficult to guess, the plotting is clever and unpredictable.  Benoit remains a steadfast atheist, though by mystery's end may have graduated to agnostic.

The director continues to wear topicality on his sleeve with thinly veiled jabs at the zeitgeist, though not as blatantly as in its predecessor.  Johnson does handle Catholicism with taste, never mocking.  I'm thinking of Jud's "Road to Damascus" moment after speaking with a secretary.  He sought information and soon became her sounding board, her priest.  Jud is ready to give up the case and just be a minister.  It felt genuine.  WAKE UP DEAD MAN works as both a reverent examination of faith and a crackling whodunnit.  There are even references to Scooby Doo and STAR WARS, which should sufficiently irk all those detractors of THE LAST JEDI.