“Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” Is the Best Film in the Series So Far

Note: This review is spoiler free.

Josh O’Connor and Daniel Craig in Wake Up Dead Man. John Wilson/Netflix

The murder mystery genre is generally said to have originated in 1844 with Edgar Allen Poe’s story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and was popularized by authors like Arthur Conan Doyle (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes), Agatha Christie (Murder on the Orient Express), and Raymond Chandler (The Long Goodbye). It’s a genre well suited for literature but often tricky to execute on film, which is why some of the most famous mystery movies are based on books. There have been a handful of successful mystery films throughout the years that were original stories—including Chinatown, Clue, and Se7en—but it does seem that the genre is seldomly tackled in the world of today’s cinema.

John Wilson/Netflix

That said, in recent years, we’ve seen an increased interest in the classic detective story, as evidenced by Kenneth Branagh’s Hercule Poirot films (starting with 2017’s Murder on the Orient Express) and Rian Johnson’s Knives Out series. When the original Knives Out was released in 2019, it gained quite a bit of buzz, and it felt like a very fresh take on a dying genre, pun intended. I enjoyed the film quite a bit, but the reveal fell a little short of what I was hoping for the conclusion of the story. Johnson’s second film in the series, Glass Onion (2022), fell even shorter for me—it seemed to split its focus too much between the mystery it was telling and its social/political commentary. While I’m all for directors including their views in their movies, the commentary was a little too “in your face” and unrelenting, which hindered my enjoyment of the film quite a bit.

With Wake Up Dead Man, the director has been able to build on what was successful in Knives Out and learn from the mistakes made in Glass Onion. The result is a film that is engaging and funny, and also has something to say.

Josh Brolin, Daryl McCormack, Glenn Close, Cailee Spaeny, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott and Jeremy Renner in Wake Up Dead Man. John Wilson

One of the best elements of these movies is the large ensemble of quirky characters. The main characters in this story are two Catholic clergymen, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) and Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor). Jud is a young priest who found reform in Catholicism after accidentally killing his opponent in a boxing match. After punching another clergyman, he is sent to the small, picturesque town of Chimney Rock in Upstate New York to help Monsignor Wicks run his small but faithful parish. Wicks is an unabashed leader unafraid to speak his mind and single out newcomers to his church, keeping his circle of followers very close and obedient. Jud realizes that the older priest has strayed far from the teachings of the Catholicism and is using religion to manipulate and influence the town negatively. The tension built between the two men leads to a battle of wills—and, soon after, a murder. This brings us to our large cast of suspects, which includes an alcoholic doctor, a young politician, a failed sci-fi writer, and a former concert musician. Daniel Craig returns as our favorite detective, Benoit Blanc.

John Wilson/Netflix

The setting of Chimney Rock and the Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude church is another element of Wake Up Dead Man that really makes it memorable. We spend most of the film in an extravagantly gothic church in a secluded and heavily wooded town. The atmosphere is very dark and ominous, amplified by Johnson’s filmmaking style, which includes bold lighting choices and dramatic camera movements. In some ways, these choices can be a little distracting, but they really do build a style unique to Johnson’s films. I quickly learned to embrace his style, and by the end of the film I was really having fun with it. This also plays a big part in what makes the Knives Out films feel fresh and pushes them to stand out from other movies in the genre.

Josh Brolin as Monsignor Wicks. John Wilson/Netflix

Like the previous films, this one features social and political commentary. While it was still pretty obvious, I don’t think it outshined the mystery as much as it did in the previous installment. It seemed to pop up here and there, but then took a back seat during the mystery aspects of the story. The most unmistakable connection to our modern society is the similarities between Monsignor Wicks and his devotees to the current presidential administration. While this trope is becoming a little overdone at this point, I do think it’s slightly more subtle here than other examples. Faith is also a big theme of the film, and I appreciate these observations the most, because they seem a little more open ended and address both the positive and negative sides of religion.

John Wilson/Netflix

Telling a well-executed whodunnit is always a tough balance to achieve. You don’t want the mystery to be so easy to solve that it isn’t satisfying, but you also don’t want it to be impossible for the audience to follow. Wake Up Dead Man comes close to achieving this balance. Compared to the previous two films, this story definitely has the most layered and intricate mystery, which kept me guessing throughout the entire runtime. We are presented with many motivations and clues, and even more red herrings. I was able to pick up on a few aspects of the case, but looking back there were definitely moments where I felt a little manipulated by the filmmakers. This brings me to my only real complaint in the story, which is that there were some things that suggest the culprit’s involvement in the crime, but it would have been impossible to guess their full motive simply because we were not given enough information—it is really only explained at the end of the story through a series of flashbacks. While this did hinder my satisfaction of the conclusion, the path to the resolution was fun enough for me to overlook that hinderance. In the end, I really had a good time with Wake Up Dead Man, and I’m excited to see what Rian Johnson has in store for us next.