‘Wake Up Dead Man’ review: Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig deliver raucous ‘Knives Out’ mystery
After a limited theatrical run, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is now streaming on Netflix.
You can still catch it in cinemas, instead of Netflix’s preferred method of home-viewing, but either way, this is a film well worth watching.
Film News Blitz’s Dan Lawrence revels in a concept well-executed.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5
Setting the stage
I sat down in my local Showcase at the earliest opportunity to watch Wake Up Dead Man, and despite Netflix’s bigwigs assuming nobody likes cinemas, the auditorium around me had plenty of bums on seats.
The busy theatre was bristling with anticipation as the Netflix ‘N’ flashed on screen, and made way for Josh O’Connor’s Father Jud Duplenticy.
Like its two predecessors, Wake Up Dead Man delivers incredibly well on its modern-Poirot premise.
What is ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ about?
Wake Up Dead Man is the third film in the Knives Out series, which drops Daniel Craig’s amateur sleuth in a totally new situation, with a new set of characters, and a new murder to solve.
Just like Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective, Johnson’s sleuth is the only constant in Knives Out films, and this time, he often plays second fiddle.
For much of the story, it is Jud Duplenticy who leads the show and Wake Up Dead Man starts with him being cast out, after punching a contemporary, to Josh Brolin’s Monsignor Jefferson Wicks and his dwindling congregation.
Wicks is a madman, a religious fanatic who flies in the face of Duplenticy’s peaceful interpretation of faith.
When Wicks dies in an impossible crime, surrounded by his loyal clique of followers, the fingers all point toward Duplenticy.
That’s when Blanc drops in, with a new suit and long crop of hair, to unravel the mystery.
Who stars in ‘Wake Up Dead Man’?
Craig and O’Connor are absolute scene stealers, on their own and together, but there’s also a great cast of characters around them.
As well as Brolin’s Wicks, there’s Mila Kunis’ chief of police, Geraldine Scott, Glenn Close’s servant to the Chruch, Martha Delacroix, Jeremy Renner’s drunk, divorced Doctor Nat Sharp, Kerry Washington’s shackled attorney, Vera Draven, Andrew Scott’s disgraced sci-fi author, Lee Ross, Cailee Spaeny’s suffering cellist, Simone Vivane, Daryl McCormack’s far-right political content creator Cy Draven and Thomas Haden Church’s faitful groundskeeper, Samson Holt.
This all-star ensemble is almost on a par with the five-star original Knives Out, and each character is written with a razor-sharp wit by Johnson, performed brilliantly by the actors, and serves this satirical commentary on several sectors of society well.
Herein lies one of the more masterful elements of Wake Up Dead Man.
Johnson examines the cultural war that has been playing out in America under the Trump administration, and Wake Up Dead Man poses questions of Church versus State, and the role religion plays in modern society.
He does this expertly through the characters at play, and Blanc is our eyes to examine them.
What makes ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ a good film?
From the well-written characters, the stunning performances and the social commentary, everything is soundly put together in Wake Up Dead Man.
That’s why the jokes land well, the tension cuts sharply, and we’re hooked to the very end to watch Blanc unveil the conspirators among the cast of characters.
The nuance is that the low-hanging fruit of ridiculing faith isn’t employed in this film at all, only those who have ridiculous ideas about faith.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Film awards: Leonardo DiCaprio among nine Golden Globes nominations for ‘One Battle After Another’
Also, whereas Glass Onion had a fanciful, remote tech-bro-owned island as its setting, devoid of any real tactility, Wake Up Dead Man’s church-based setting is grounded in familiarity, history and warmth, akin to the vintage mansion from the original Knives Out.
Craig, as always, is having immense fun as Benoit Blanc, and that pours out of the screen, but returning to this film’s modern-Poirot brief is where the greatness lies.
Wake Up Dead Man is supremely compelling when Blanc isn’t on screen, but always enriched when he takes to the stage, and that is a job well done.
You can watch Wake Up Dead Man on Netflix or in cinemas.
READ NEXT: Film news: Milly Alcock takes centre stage in DC’s ‘Supergirl’ trailer
