{"id":10042712,"date":"2025-11-26T05:09:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T10:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vanyaland.com\/?p=10042712"},"modified":"2025-11-26T05:09:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T10:09:09","slug":"wake-up-dead-man-review-knives-out-crucifixes-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vanyaland.com\/2025\/11\/26\/wake-up-dead-man-review-knives-out-crucifixes-in\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Wake Up Dead Man’ Review: Knives out, crucifixes in"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Props to Rian Johnson for turning lemons into lemonade: the man hears that Glass Onion <\/em>was too preachy, then sets the next feature in the Knives Out<\/em> series in a parish. It shouldn\u2019t be surprising that he\u2019s wound up here \u2014 his movies are puzzle boxes that JJ Abrams wishes he was talented enough to pen \u2014 but, as fun as these movies can be, it is somewhat frustrating to find us contractually back here again, when there once seemed to be more on the horizon; roster depth and some dingers tiding one over until the inevitable Wild Card round loss. The team could do better, but at least they\u2019re not where they were last season. If Knives Out<\/em> was a smart iteration on the Christie formula and Glass Onion<\/em> the worst kind of Last of Sheila<\/em> remake, the latest installment, Wake Up Dead Man<\/em><\/strong>, represents all the possibilities and perils that the words \u201cA Rian Johnson Whodunnit\u201d imply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the one hand, you have a well-crafted murder mystery performed by a dynamic, smartly-assembled cast, led by an actor who has created one of the best franchise-leading characters in recent memory. This time, our subject is the reverend Jud Duplenticy (Josh O\u2019Connor), a priest who\u2019d resemble Bing Crosby\u2019s crooning Christ-follower in Going My Way<\/em> if he\u2019d chosen boxing over ballads. He\u2019s been assigned by a foul-mouthed bishop (Jeffery Wright) to assist a struggling parish led by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin). The problem isn\u2019t increasing secularism, a lack of interest, or that the issues of the modern-day Catholic Church have come home to roost \u2014 the problem is Wicks himself, who has crafted a targeted fire-and-brimstone approach to the pulpit intentionally meant to alienate newcomers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s got money and tragedy in his past \u2014 he\u2019s following in his grandfather\u2019s footsteps as a priest, blasting his mother as a \u201charlot whore,\u201d who placed herself under grandad\u2019s iron fist to do what she wanted after she acquired her inheritance. They both died \u2014 the daughter penniless outside of her father\u2019s sealed mausoleum, Grandad smugly satisfied his daughter would never, ever get her inheritance. You get enough trauma like that, and of course, you\u2019re going to torture the new priest at your parish by listing off during confession how many times you\u2019ve jerked off in the last week without sparing a single detail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The remaining congregants are, of course, comprised of the occasionally sympathetic person and Johnson\u2019s Twitter nemeses represented as boorish archetypes. It\u2019s not nearly as bad as it was in Glass Onion<\/em>, but having two right-wing grifters \u2014 Andrew Scott\u2019s failing sci-fi writer, now a Substacker with such intense paranoia he\u2019s turned his house into a fortress, and Daryl McCormick\u2019s failed politician with an omnipresent smartphone camera rig and a murky family history \u2014 is a bit much. On the sympathetic side, there\u2019s Jeremy Renner as the town doctor, dealing with alcoholism after his wife left him; Kerry Washington as the Wicks\u2019 family\u2019s lawyer (who \u201cadopted\u201d McCormick later in life); Cailee Spaney as a cellist with a degenerative disease who bought Wicks\u2019 snake oil that he could heal her; and Thomas Haden Church as the groundskeeper, a charming and sober fellow who\u2019s gruffness conceals his devotion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, there\u2019s Glenn Close, who plays Wicks\u2019 girl Friday, responsible for much of the church\u2019s upkeep and management, a true believer in her own right with designs of her own. When Wicks dies in front of his congregation during a Good Friday service in truly mysterious circumstances, all eyes land on Jud, whose disagreements with Wicks\u2019 ideology and method are close to boiling over. It\u2019s damn near close to the perfect murder, and you better bet the Sheriff (Mila Kunis) ain\u2019t gonna figure it out on her own. He\u2019s the fall guy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or, at least he\u2019s supposed to be, until the southern-fried bon vivant<\/em> Benoit Blanc (Vanyaland <\/em>2025 Performer of the Year Daniel Craig) shows up on Saturday. Craig remains the best personality in on-screen detective fiction since Peter Ustinov\u2019s Poirot, and the fun that he has working with Johnson is infectious enough to gloss over a great deal of the series\u2019 problems. The formula for the leads \u2014 in which Craig is paired with an emerging acting talent like Ana de Armas or Janelle Monae\u00a0 \u2014 has never been well-mixed, and O\u2019Connor is a brilliant straight man to Craig\u2019s crime-solving Foghorn Leghorn. Blanc is everything Jud isn\u2019t, with his book-learning, fancy dress, appreciation for show tunes, strong stomach, and resistance to all things relating to religion, but the two form a strange bond, mostly because Jud knows he\u2019s his only way out of prison and <\/em>because Blanc knows in his heart that the priest didn\u2019t do it. He\u2019s guilty<\/em>, suffering from a heavy conscience, but not responsible<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both grow and evolve as characters, and find themselves challenged by the events of the story, though you\u2019ll have to watch to find out why. I feel comfortable in saying that this is the best-assembled ensemble in one of these movies yet, a nice pick-up from Glass Onion<\/em>\u2019s fuck-up in the casting department, and the entire feature goes down easy, smoothed by Craig\u2019s sheer charisma and Johnson\u2019s skilled sleight-of-hand and storytelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To alter a prior thesis, the main problem with the Knives Out <\/em>movies isn\u2019t their inherent timeliness (though Johnson\u2019s need to comment on current events ensures that the shelf life of these features will be much shorter than the ones he\u2019s paying homage to), it\u2019s that they\u2019re suffused with a cloying cleverness. It\u2019s not enough to merely revive the \u201clocked-room mystery\u201d or acknowledge the influence of John Dickson Carr\u2019s The Hollow Man<\/em> on the text\u2014 Close has to select it as a choice for the church book club among many of its predecessors and descendants, and Craig has to walk us through Carr\u2019s outline of the \u201cperfect crime\u201d so that the non-mystery heads in the audience can appreciate the depth of Johnson\u2019s knowledge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These aren\u2019t so much conversations with the genre as much as they resemble lectures, with the extremely online politics only amplifying that tone. It\u2019s not arrogance or pretension*, it\u2019s an enthusiasm that anyone with an ADHD friend knows all too well; their latest hyperfocus ensuring that your average car ride conversation will transform into a deluge of facts. The issues come in how<\/em> the passenger hears these stream-of-consciousness rambles coming from the driver\u2019s seat.** Sometimes, they\u2019re interesting and engaging; other times, one wants to leap out of the car and take their chances on walking from Albuquerque to Walla Walla.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, compared to Glass Onion<\/em>, Wake Up Dead Man<\/em> feels like a return to form, even if I don\u2019t know if Johnson will ever be able to recapture what made the first film feel<\/em> special beyond putting together a great ensemble (something Branagh has often done with his Christie adaptations) and offering Craig a chance to steal every single scene (something Branagh can\u2019t do with Poirot). It\u2019s clear enough that he wants to \u2013 returning to the gothic landscapes of the Northeast, getting rid of the goddamned puzzles, adding a fair bit of bitchy family history \u2013 and it\u2019s hard to blame him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the story breaks free of the vice-like grip the metatext has on its throat, and barring a few lily-gilding twists, there\u2019s a really compelling mystery here, buffeted by strong writing, a keen wit, and an appealingly dark sensibility compared to its predecessor. All of these elements are made even better in a theater, where you can immerse yourself in the story and experience the wonder of a collective laugh. I can\u2019t really imagine how Wake Up Dead Man<\/em> will play at home, but I doubt it\u2019s more fun. If we can\u2019t have one of these without the politics or the series\u2019 referential nature, I hope we\u2019ll get the next installments in movie theaters for longer than a two-week run at Cinemark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* One doesn\u2019t direct a Star War in this era without having proven their skill and talent as a filmmaker.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

** I am often the driver in this metaphor, so I don\u2019t mean it as a dig at the neurodivergent.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Props to Rian Johnson for turning lemons into lemonade: the man hears that Glass Onion was too preachy, then sets the next feature in the Knives Out series in a parish. It shouldn\u2019t be surprising that he\u2019s wound up here \u2014 his movies are puzzle boxes that JJ Abrams wishes he was talented enough to pen \u2014 but, as fun as these movies can be, it is somewhat frustrating to find us contractually back here again, when there once seemed 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