Three films in and Johnson manages to entertain as he delivers the most personal and ground entry yet
Knives Out as a franchise has done the near impossible. Starting out as a quirky star studded indie whodunnit inspired by the director’s love of Agatha Christie in 2019, it offered Rian Johnson the chance to do something a bit more grounded, after singlehandedly crafting the best film in the recent Star Wars trilogy. (You can fight me on that one!) The irony is that that film would then birth its own IP, which was snatched up by Netflix after a bidding war with its now third entry hitting the festival circuit, which is where I caught it at the Philadelphia Film Festival as its opening night film.
Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man is a departure from the decadence of Glass Onion and a regrounding of the series, focusing on a smaller and more personal story for the director. While this most definitely is a Benoit Blanc mystery, at its core it’s an exploration of faith, religion and the world of alternative facts. Blanc doesn’t appear until about 35 minutes in, and I think that’s really for the best. Until then we get to know the players as we witness events leading up to the Good Friday Murder of Msgr. Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) – a Trump-esque parish leader who governs his flock at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude with his cult of personality along with fear and demoralization of his parishioners. It’s obvious Brolin is just having the time of his life in this role and he’s opposite Josh O’Connor (The Crown), who plays Rev. Jud Duplenticy, a young street smart priest who’s dispatched by the Catholic Church to help reinvigorate the dying parish with his message of love and inclusion.
The reason for Benoit Blanc’s involvement is the miraculous circumstances surrounding Msgr. Wicks murder that Good Friday — because he was stabbed while doing a sermon, while ALL of the suspects were nowhere near him. This impossible murder offers the detective a “locked-room mystery” a holy grail for the sleuth, who is chomping at the bit to unlock it for his eventual denouement.
Here Johnson, by pitting Msgr. Wick versus Rev. Jud, he brilliantly illustrates the dichotomy of what religion, by its own doctrine should be, versus how it’s often weaponized. It’s something Rev. Jud embodies on screen with his altruistic approach trying to heal the community Msgr. Wick has made a career dividing. This faith exploration is compounded when the new Rev. becomes the primary suspect, since not only had he openly fought with Msgr. Wick, but before the cloth, he was a boxer who killed someone in the ring.This has the young priest sparring with his faith, because why would God test him in such a way if he was only trying to do what is right? Once Blanc enters the fray, you have some deeper spiritual conversations on the concept of faith and religion between the detective and Rev. Jud that as someone of faith I found deeply moving.
While the performances are the sort of over the top caricatures, which are often necessary for this kind of narrative. It’s because of how Johnson doesn’t shy away from the spiritual aspects the setting offers up, that is the real heart and soul – if you will of this story. I also love how these casts are usually made of fresh faces – Cailee Spaeny and Josh O’Connor, mixed with icons like Josh Brolin, Glenn Close, Kerry Washington – along with a few faces I’ve missed, like Mila Kunis who here plays the sheriff of the small town of Chimney Rock. There’s also Johnson’s dialog, that’s not easy to deliver, which mixes a more naturalist conversational cadence with some razor sharp flourishes of wit. This cast manages to effortlessly weave through these exchanges, while never losing the emotional resonance of the delivery of each line. It’s the kind of dialogue you can only get from someone like a Johnson, or Tarantino, and this script is easily his best yet in how it encapsulates its message within that prose.
This is easily Johnson’s best Knives Out film yet. It’s not just a great whodunnit, but he’s able to pair the mystery you’d expect, with a deeply introspective and personal look at faith which couldn’t have been easy. I was laughing just as much at Blanc, as I was moved by Rev. Jud’s crisis of faith and his struggle to find his way back to the church. I also found it hit equally as hard as a person of faith, who is always quick to follow any declaration of such with a qualifying statement – that I am not like those kinds of people. While through Blanc – Johnson is careful to objectively dissect faith, as someone who was once a Protestant himself he also doesn’t rob faith of the hope it offers some. Wake up Dead Man offers not only all of that, but a mystery that will have you guessing till the film’s final moments.
