Tell Me The Story

My Thoughts on Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

I have always been a firm believer of the notion that when it comes to the mystery genre, the best examples are the ones that are less interested in the mystery itself than they are in presenting intriguing characters and observing them as they bounce off of each other as they go about solving it. For example, Ira Levin’s Deathtrap, either in its stage or screen incarnation, is as diabolically clever and well-constructed of a mystery as you could hope for but since the characters inhabiting it are not intrinsically interesting, there is nothing to hold onto afterwards that might induce you to care that much about it once it has ended, let alone have much of any desire of watching it again. On the other hand, I have seen The Thin Man countless times over the years even though I obviously know whodunit and why because the byplay between William Powell, Myrna Low and the stellar supporting cast (including the one and only Asta) is so delightful throughout that the details about the crime at its center are pretty much secondary.

Knives Out, Rian Johnson’s affectionate riff on Agatha Christie-style murder mysteries, was a film that understood this perfectly. Although the mechanics of the crime and its eventual solution were satisfying enough, what made the film such a winner was the interactions of a cast that included the likes of Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Christopher Plummer, Jamie Lee Curtis, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon and, of course, Daniel Craig as debonair detective Benoit Blanc, a role that he played to such affectionately hammy perfection that there is an excellent chance that it, and not James Bond, will go down in film history as his signature part. Craig was just as entertaining in Johnson’s 2022 follow up, Glass Onion, but the mix was a bit off that time around—in trying to outdo the original and outwit the fans, it put a little too much emphasis on the mystery aspect, which wasn’t that interesting, and not enough on creating characters engaging enough to match wits with either each other or with Blanc. It was still reasonably fun, mostly due to Craig, but it seemed more interested in jamming in sly in-jokes and cameo bits than anything else and the whole thing felt a little too bloated for its own good.

Now comes the latest Benoit Blanc mystery, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, and while it is not quite as good as the original film, it comes much closer to that mark than its predecessor. Standing in marked contrast to the silly and sunshiny excesses of Glass Onion, this installment finds Johnson working in a darker mode with his latest tale of murder and deception and finds any number of satisfying ways to play with both genre and audience expectations while still telling a reasonably compelling story. More importantly, Johnson has again supplied viewers with an array of quirkily entertaining and interesting characters to drive the story along as well as a strong ensemble of actors to bring them to life. The result is a film that is a lot of fun to watch as it unspools before your eyes and even leaves you with something to think about afterwards other than trying to poke holes in the plotting.

Of course, to reveal too much about what occurs during it would be a crime in itself, so I will tread as lightly as possible in regard to plot particulars. As it begins, Rev. Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor), a former pugilist-turned-clergyman, has been reassigned to a small church in the upstate New York town by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), a man who rules the church with an iron fist, and the assistance of loyal aide Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), and whose rancorous manner behind the pulpit has caused his flock to dwindle to just a few loyalists—town doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington) and her half-brother, failed Republican politician Cy (Daryl McCormack), ailing cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny), one-time best-selling author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott) and handyman Samson (Thomas Haden Church). At first, Jud is willing to simply observe but after a while, Rev. Wicks’s treatment of his parishioners becomes too much for him and he vows to bring an end to the madness, even if the others don’t seem particularly keen on backing him.

Suffice it to say, one of the characters mentioned above turns up dead and while the local police chief, Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis) is sympathetic enough to his plight, there is more than enough circumstantial evidence to suggest that Jud is the killer. It is at this point, that Blanc (Craig) makes his grand entrance, having been summoned to help crack the case and prove Jud’s innocence. Blanc is initially intrigued by the case as the particulars suggest that it is an example of that trickiest of detective narratives—the kind of locked-room mystery in which a murder is apparently performed under seemingly impossible circumstances. As he and Jud talk to the others, any number of startling secrets are revealed over the course of their investigation but as time begins to run out, will Blanc be able to figure out the who’s and why’s and save Jud or will this prove to be the rare case to stump the legendary sleuth.

As was the case with the previous installments, Wake Up Dead Man finds Johnson trying to simultaneously present viewers with an amusing riff on the familiar conventions of the mystery genre and a compelling and straightforward presentation of those very same conventions. As a mystery, it is sufficiently and fairly twisty in all the expected ways so that even those who are fairly certain early on that they have correctly identified the killer may find their confidence shaken from time to time. At the same time, Johnson is also having a lot of fun making sport of the expected conventions and satirizing the particular personality types represented by the various characters. As for the actors, they are clearly having a blast throughout as they tear into the juicy material and while some of the characters may not be quite as developed as others—the ones played by Spaeny, Washington and Kunis in particular suffer a bit in this regard—they all interact with such well-oiled precision that they hardly seem to be following the parameters of a screenplay.

Unlike the other Knives Out films, however, Wake Up Dead Man has more on its mind than providing viewers with a simple mystery romp, as evidenced by the colder, overtly Gothic trappings on hand throughout. As the film goes on with Blanc and Jud trying to solve the crime, they prove to be more than just a comedically mismatched duo who confound each other in all the expected ways before coming to a meeting of the minds before the end. Although the two are obviously opposites from the moment they meet—Jud is a genuinely devoted man of the cloth eager to do good to atone for elements of his sketchy past while Blanc is a proud self-described heretic—it gradually becomes apparent that the two have more in common that one might expect in the sense that they are both trying to find answers to seemingly unknowable questions, one through the power of faith and the other through logic and deductive reasoning. Here, however, it goes beyond that to contemplate what exactly it means to them if/when they answer those questions and what that means to them on a more contemplative level. This is a fascinating concept and it definitely leaves viewers with more to ponder afterwards than they might have expected.

That said, I don’t want to suggest that Wake Up Dead Man is some kind of heavy existential drama by any means. This is a smartly constructed work filled with sly wit, clever twists and engaging performances that shows that, after the minor stumble of Glass Onion, that this is a franchise that is clearly firing on all cylinders. Instead of lazily relying on repeating elements that worked before, it is a film that is willing to take some risks by trying new things and even if they don’t always come off, you can at the very least appreciate the effort. It is clear throughout this film that Johnson trusts his audience enough to take them on these more ambitious excursions instead of just rehashing familiar beats and that the audience trusts that even his more offbeats conceits (such as not having the face of the franchise turn up until about 40 minutes in) will pay off in a satisfying manner. This is a film that may at first glance look like just another sequel in a film year filled with such things but, much like the case at it center, it turns out that there is far more to it than initially meets the eye.