MPAA Rating: R
Reel Rating: 2 out of 5 reels
The premise for Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is promising; a friendly Catholic priest teams up with a sarcastic detective to solve the murder of a fellow priest, a crime that was probably committed by one of the congregants. It is a premise that gives off wonderful Father Brown vibes.
However, this film was written and directed by Rain Johnson, who infamously made a mess of The Last Jedi and describes himself with that most insidious moniker as “raised Catholic.” The result is much as anticipated: a middle-tier film with some good elements but also with much worldly, pagan nonsense.
Fr. Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Conner) is a young, enthusiastic priest sent by his bishop to be the assistant pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, a troubled parish ruled with an iron fist by the fire-and-brimstone preacher Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin). Wicks has no interest in the wider community, deliberately ostracizing new parishioners to keep his flock small, pure, and cultishly loyal.
When Wicks is murdered just after his homily on Good Friday, Cajun detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) takes on the case. In true Agatha Christie fashion, Blanc discovers that every follower had a motive, and things are never what they seem. He and Fr. Jud also form an unlikely friendship as they undercover strange plot twists, leading to a revelatory conclusion.
There is one thing this film does magnificently, and that is the character of Fr. Jud, brilliantly executed by British actor Josh O’Conner, previously best known for his Emmy-winning performance as Prince Charles in The Crown. Fr. Jud is charming but not naïve. He has a speckled past, having spent his youth as a boxer chasing fame and fortune. After he killed someone in the ring, however, he had a profound conversion and gave his life to Christ, though he still struggles with the sin of wrath. He is motivated by the redemption Jesus offers and wants to bring eternal life to everyone he meets.
Despite Wicks’ duplicity and the uncooperative nature of the parishioners, Fr. Jud still works hard to help them. He is also the only character in the Knives Out series who can go toe-to-toe with Blanc. The atheistic detective is rude and dismissive towards Jud’s faith at first, but gradually he comes to respect Fr. Jud’s intelligence and pleasant demeanor. In their final meeting, Fr. Jud invites him to Sunday Mass. Blanc replies there is “nothing I would like to do less” with a smile, but one senses that maybe a seed has been planted.
One of the continual faults of the Kives Out series, and Johnson’s work in general, is the cartoonish manner in which he portrays any conservative or orthodox beliefs, and Wake Up might be his most silly in that regard. There’s a YouTube content creator who films everything, especially at the most inappropriate moments. There’s a cancelled science fiction writer who raves about racial politics and transgenderism online. There’s the “church lady” who fulfills twenty parish roles and coldly eyes everyone as less holy than her.
Then there’s Wicks himself, who mentions sexual sins during confession to embarrass Fr. Jud, drinks heavily despite helping the custodian get sober, and is more obsessed with finding his father’s lost treasure than helping God’s kingdom. It’s hard to read this as anything but a characterization and chastisement of anything “traditional” in Catholicism or anything “right” of Michael Moore.
While all this is frustrating enough, it is not helped by the weakest storyline in the Knives Out series. While there are a few twists, they are inorganic and unearned. Narrative threads are either predictable or irrational. While Fr. Jud and Blanc work well together, the rest of the ensemble is haphazard. In the end, the mystery is solved, but the audience is left wondering how or why it matters.
Wake Up Dead Man, with the exception of O’Conner, is a mess. The Catholicism feels tacked on rather than a fluid narrative element, and the story itself never fully materializes. Many reviewers who, like Johnson, were “raised Catholic” have relished its portrayal, and it’s a view with a harsh bias.
Still, if people love Fr. Jud and want to take him up on his invitation to come back to Mass, then the film will be a success in one important way.
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It’s a mystery movie….. For God’s sake, stop taking everything so seriously….
Waste of good money. Is this “art”?
Is mere entertainment never enough?
I disagree. Yes, Father Wicks is a disgusting and horrible priest, and the tiny flock he has gathered around him are for the mostly (not all) terrible people, but the movie for me was about what happens a real, true Catholic priest, and real grace, enters the scene. At the end, Wicks is gone, most of the others scatter, and Father Jud renames the church Our Lady of Perpetual Grace (a theological virtue – it previously carried the name Fortitude, classical virtue). Tellingly, Wicks’s church had an empty space where the crucifix should have been, and Father Jud carves a new one with his own hands. It is clearly a springtime for the church.
The confession/absolution scene toward the end was shocking in its Catholic beauty, and despite having Blanc as an atheist witness – which would not happen in real confession – the fact is that most moviegoers would be atheists themselves, with no notion of the grace of the sacrament. They have only been told and shown negative things about it. It was one of the most Catholic and moving things I have ever seen on the screen. [A faithful priest was consulted and he did a great job].