Review: Wake Up Dead Man Is A Modern Retelling Of The Life Of Jesus Christ
In Josh O'Connor we trust
It's rather telling that the theme of the latest film in a mystery series that always releases right before Christmas is the institution behind Christmas itself. Rian Johnson's Wake Up Dead Man is about Benoit Blanc solving the mystery of a zealous priest's murder. But just as much (or even more so), it's an exploration of what religion means in a world that is increasingly turning its back on it.
In fact, our Poirot-esque detective with a southern accent doesn't even make a proper entry before forty minutes into the film. What we do get is a very human priest trying to do his bit for the community in Josh O'Connor: Jud Duplenticy is a former boxer who takes the cloth out of guilt for killing an opponent in the ring. His violence gets the best of him at times, and he is transferred out of New York and into a parish in a fictional Chimney Rock for punching a rude deacon.
Jud now works under the fiery Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), whose answer to the dwindling state of Christianity is to fan the flames of resentment and fear in the minds of the church regulars: a stacked cast consisting of the parish's devout housekeeper, Martha (Glenn Close), a failing conspiracy novelist Lee Ross played by Andrew Scott (can we please not crack any Fleabag jokes here?), a failed politician and right wing influencer Cy (Daryl McCormack), an alcoholic doctor wrecked by his broken marriage, Dr. Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), a sharp-tongued lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington) and a disabled former cellist Simone Viviane (Cailee Spaeny) who turned to religion hoping for a miracle to cure her condition.
Jud stands for everything against this kind of fearmongering. His disagreements with Monsignor Wicks become a matter of public knowledge. So when, after a Good Friday service, he sees the Monsignor drop down dead in a storage closet, he is the lead suspect in the murder.
This is where Benoit Blanc comes in.
The Whodunnit
One way to make for a compelling whodunnit is to make your viewers ask if the “it” was even done in the first place at all.
This formula fits neatly in the context of a godman’s murder, so you're in for a ride if you figured out the killer early on.
Much of the effort in building the mystery goes towards diverting you from your strongest suspects (as it should, to be honest). Johnson also seems to have read the online joke where the easiest way to tell the murderer in Knives Out movies is to check if they are former Avengers leads within or outside the MCU: you have both Thanos (Brolin) and Hawkeye (Renner) this time, and at some point, you even tend to suspect the victim, Brolin's Monsignor Wicks to be behind all the mess.
That said, the detective story does feel a little too repetitive at this point. Sure, it's better than Glass Onions, but Johnson's attempts to constantly subvert expectations like the first movie falls a little flat by now. Tropes like the innocent lead who helps Blanc and tries to take the fall for others feels a bit too cliché this time, and the film clings to aspects other than the mystery to make for a good movie.
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The Bright Flash of Light
What the mystery cannot do in Wake Up Dead Man, the cinematography and lighting do in volumes. The colour grading is a feast for the eyes, and a much-needed relief from the washed-out look that seems to be in every Netflix release lately.
The light that seeps in through the church windows becomes its own character here, dimming when someone questions religion, and brightening (sometimes even like a halo on the characters) when someone - read Jud - makes a point in favour of it. Blanc's moment of epiphany at the end that stops him from revealing the killer plays even more into this God-as-a-source-of-light motif when you learn the biblical story of “The Road To Damascus”: Paul the Pharisee, on his way to persecuting Christians in Damascus, is struck by a blinding flash of light from the heavens, and ends up converting to Christianity instead, becoming Paul the Apostle.
Does that mean that Benoit Blanc, the “proud heretic” in his own words, gives in to religion when he declares he can’t solve the case at the end? The answer is yes if you go by Cy’s Youtube uploads. If you stuck around for the truth the answer is much more than that.
The Christ of the Tiktok era
Despite all the criticism, what endears me to Johnson’s Knives Out series is that, beyond the mysteries, the films also give our detective a chance to grow as a person. Benoit Blanc’s road to Damascus moment in the film was not recognising the murderer, but gaining the wisdom of letting go of the “altar of reality” to give a moment of grace to a killer who deserves it.
Kindness becomes the point of all religion, and Wake Up Dead Man is a story of Benoit Blanc learning this truth. Josh O'Connor's Jud Duplenticy, thus, becomes the Christ of the Tiktok era. Even when time is running out for him, this man stops all investigation to help out a churchgoer coming to him for strength at a vulnerable point in her life.
He also has a Mary Magdalene equivalent in his compassion for Wick's mother, villainised by others as the “harlot whore” simply because of her money-mindedness and refusal to dress modestly. The politician-influencer Cy and Monsignor Wicks become the religious leaders who sought Christ's execution, Blanc the apostle and the investigation becomes the crucifixion that our Christ is thankfully redeemed from.
By the end, we viewers, who know of his innocence believe that he is a genuinely good person trying to help everyone he can. Most of the characters in the story, who don't know the real killer, are up in arms against him. Sounds familiar?