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Rian Johnson, I owe you an apology. After trashing the first Knives Out movie and reluctantly warming up to Glass Onion (though that was mostly Kathryn Hahn’s doing), Wake Up Dead Man has knocked it out of the park, and might just be the best crime caper I’ve seen in the last few years.
When I was 14, I was a huge fan of the legendary crime author Agatha Christie. I hoovered up her books, watched every TV adaptation known to man and even tried getting into Doctor Who in 2008 when they randomly decided to do an episode on her disappearance.
Ever since those glory days, I’ve been trying to chase the same feeling Christie’s stories once gave me. We’re spoilt for choice when it comes to incredible crime dramas, but nothing quite fills her shoes… until now. Wake Up Dead Man takes the likes of The Murder at the Vicarage and elevates it for 2025, and boy is there a lot to like.
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is the Agatha Christie classic for 2025
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In Upstate New York, a shy and charming young priest (Josh O’Connor) joins a rural community as the assistant pastor of their church. It’s run by a totalitarian monsignor who looks a little like a Walmart version of God (Josh Brolin) and instills fear into his flock every week.
In the middle of an Easter week sermon, the monsignor is fatally stabbed in the back, and only Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) has the foresight to solve the case. Local police chief Geraldine (Mila Kunis) is at her wits end, the church’s right-hand woman Martha (Glenn Close) is in religious turmoil, and local author Lee (Andrew Scott) wants to make as much money from what’s happened as possible.
Every bone in my body said Wake Up Dead Man should be set in England when I watched the trailer (there are a lot of Brits playing Americans here), but its location is actually crucial to the subtext. Being set in 2025’s America means the movie can easily poke fun at Western culture and the cultural landscape, particularly given where its politics is at.
The jibes are well-covered, but they’re there if you look hard enough. The monsignor’s style of preaching with vengeance reflects how we’re seeing people communicate with each other in the wider world, weaponizing faith and opinions to use against one another. But it’s not all doom and gloom (except for our victims, obviously).
Thanks to a whip-smart script, there’s almost a laugh every minute peppered in between Blanc’s exceptional monologues we’ve come to know and love. Netflix, the cast and absurdness of what’s happening around them are all in the firing line, and the metaphorical shots fired make for the most enjoyable surprises. Nothing is too scathing or overt, and there’s no ‘woke brigade’ here. It’s just smart craft, and that’s what we want.
Our A-list cast get in the way of… well, our A-List cast
Not only has director Rian Johnson raised his game when it comes to how Wake Up Dead Man has been visualized, but his casting choices have excelled themselves. Daniel Craig has Blanc down pat and that hasn’t lost its shine, but our attention returns to Josh O’Connor time and time again throughout the film.
Struggling with a troubled past and a community that would rather eat a pile of worms rather than embrace him, O’Connor’s role as Father Jud is pivotal to the main mystery. He’s stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to testing his faith, and it’s truly beautiful to see him tested on all fronts thanks to such a nuanced performance.
As for the rest of our suspects, they fall victim to something else entirely. When you have so many names in one place, you inevitably compromise your time with them. As a result, most of them (including Kerry Washington, Daryl McCormack and Jeremy Renner) leave you wanting more, fleetingly presenting us with their intriguing backstories before vanishing into the background.
Still, we can’t complain too much. Yes, the runtime is longer than I’d like it to be and my butt went numb watching. Yes, I needed more of Kerry Washington’s quietly savage lawyer onscreen. Yes, the story took an oddly supernatural turn I wasn’t expecting.
But as a girl who loves her classic crime capers, Wake Up Dead Man is up there with the best. It has a stacked cast who deliver a well-crafted story that’s the ideal bridge between old and new, with every element keeping you in the dark. Most importantly, I didn’t guess whodunnit, and that’s a rare feat these days. I’m now ready for the Knives Out franchise to continue on for so long that Craig eventually has nobody left to act along except for the Muppets. Make it happen, Johnson.
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