Movie Review - Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

The Knives Out films have been successful because they interweave a compelling murder mystery with some facet of contemporary political society. The original was about class warfare, pitting a family of wildly varying political views against a working-class person. The second was about the ultra-wealthy, their influence, and their need to be seen as smarter than everyone else.

Wake Up Dead Man continues this trend by mostly being about the kind of war within Christianity between the more militant "fire and brimstone" version of the bible's teachings and the more benevolent (and accurate, though we aren't getting into a theology debate here) version of the bible about forgiveness and finding peace through faith. The central conflict between the Reverend (Josh Brolin) and Father Jud (Josh O'Connor) is designed to put these two differences of ideology at polar opposite positions.

And then, perhaps unfortunately, a murder happens and derails this into a murder mystery. Part of what doesn't work about Wake Up Dead Man is that there functionally feel like two separate movies: the religious exploration about humanity and power with the might of organized religion behind it, and the mystery where Daniel Craig is playing Detective Columbo with a southern accent. Because the former takes priority in a way that did not happen in the previous two entries, the mystery slows the entire movie down.

Since the most interesting aspect of the movie (the ideological dispute between Brolin and O'Connor) rightfully gets the most screentime, the issue becomes that the rest of the ensemble cast is shortchanged. Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, and Cailee Spaeny in particular aren't given anything interesting to do, which is a shame since this gallery is rich with fodder for interesting storytelling. Washington plays an attorney who was forced into acting as the adopted parent for a child whose parents are kept a secret, Scott plays an aging science fiction writer who is slowly fading into obscurity, and Spaeny plays a musician who is dealing with chronic pain so she turns to the church for a miracle.

Considering the movie is about this shift within the church and a fight for what the soul of the church is, exploring who these people are, what they stand for, what they came to the church for, and why they stayed, would have been an interesting avenue for the movie to travel along more deeply. Unfortunately, because we have to go back to the Blanc of it all, we end up not fully exploring these questions. Despite the fact that the movie is two and a half hours long, it does take a little too long to get to the actual murder as well so that also doesn't develop quite to the degree it has to.

In the end, the mystery falls apart because the explanation at the end of the movie about how the interweaving storylines happen and lead to the murder does not feel like an organic reveal. The third act of a good whodunit should feel like a magician completing a trick; this one feels like an info dump of exposition.

None of this is to say the movie is bad, but when taken with the full context of the prior Knives Out movies, it's just the weakest of the three entries. It's a shame though, because the core issue being addressed is the most interesting and fleshed out of the three. It's still worth watching because the funny moments still land, as do the deeper emotional moments. If this is the weakest of the three, and this is the weakest Johnson can create, I'll happily take one of these every few years from now until the end of time.

★★★★