Review of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, directed by Rian Johnson

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

When it comes to blogging, or even watching movies and whatnot, I’ve been in such a weird headspace lately. I started a new job after quite a bit of a spell of not having any besides freelance and contract work, and now that I am actually working, I’m not watching as much as I used.

Part of it is fueled by my newfound YouTube addiction, but part of it just is that I can’t stay awake long enough to get everything I want done. I haven’t even been going to the movies lately to see them in-person because I simply am just tired after I get everything else done.

When I do end up watching movies, I try to go for things that I’m generally really excited about. It helps to have something that I really want to watch at the end of the day because if I don’t, then I’m less likely to actually sit down and watch the movie.

And today that was Wake Up Dead Man! While this blog post is going to come out much later, I actually sat down and watched this movie when it first came out. It’s my little tradition at this point to watch the Knives Out movies when they are released, as I’ve been doing it ever since the first one came out.

My main motivation for this movie though was, admittedly, Josh O’Connor. I’ve been really liking the projects he’s found himself a part of in the past few years, and he’s such a versatile actor. I’d genuinely love to see him and Mike Faist in something together again.

Anyways, let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction.

At a church in a small New York town, the priest suddenly dies, creating questions about who murdered him and why.

At the start of the movie, we meet Jud, a former boxer who decided to find faith in Catholicism. When he punches a deacon it leads to his banishment to a parish in upstate New York, where he is the assistant to the pastor Jefferson Wicks. But as we learn quickly, Wicks isn’t exactly a ray of sunshine himself. Not only does he have an exuberant personality, but he also has a weird backstory.

He’s the grandson of Prentice Wicks, who had a significant fortune that’s remained missing for years. Jefferson’s mother, Grace, wanted to stay at the church in hopes of receiving the money, but when she learns the money went missing after Prentice’s death, she destroys the church in a rage. She specifically goes after the crucifix, and, as we learn from Wicks’ right hand Martha, she was pretty much cast out and demonized for this.

As mentioned before, Wicks has a very specific personality, and it’s actually driven away most of the worshippers in the town. Only a few remain and Jud learns pretty quickly that not only are they weirdly loyal to Wicks and his cult of personality, but he also doesn’t get along with the guy. Not long after trying to have a session with his followers, Wicks collapses in the middle of a service, while in the closet, and Jud discovers a finial in his back.

With Wicks dead, Jud is now the prime suspect by the community. Turns out he stole the finial from the bar while drunk, which doesn’t look too good for him in the eyes of the law. The chief of police here, Geraldine, brings in Benoit Blanc to start investigating, and he decides that he thinks Jud is innocent.

The next step is to ask the loyal followers what they know about that day. Turns out Wicks might’ve found his grandfather’s fortune somewhere alone the way and wanted to go into politics. Blanc’s methods create friction with Jud, but when he sees Wicks come out of the mausoleum one night and embrace the groundskeeper, he finds himself knocked out. He wakes up next to the groundskeeper’s corpse and believes he did it.

Blanc stops him from going to the police and they head to one of the follower’s, Nat’s, house. They find him there in a tub of acid, dead, with Wicks’ body hanging over him in the tub. Blanc has the police and worshippers come to the church the next day, where he declares Nat as the murderer. He claims that Nat spiked Wicks’ flash and took the finial to attach to the vestment.

When he was examining Wicks, who was actually under the sedatives, he stabbed and killed him. Blanc has no explanation for Wicks’ body over Nat’s in the acid tub. Martha then comes forward to confess: when Prentice died, he actually swallowed the diamond he swapped for his fortune. Grace was searching for it, but Martha never said anything about where it was, then she murdered Wicks with Nat.

She recruited the groundskeeper to find the diamond, who was dressed up as Wicks, but Nat killed him to take the diamond for himself. Nat then tried to kill Martha, but she swapped her poisoned coffee with his, killing him. She then says she took the poison then dies before saying she wants forgiveness from everyone.

She was holding the diamond, and a year later, Jud, as the head priest, puts it in a crucifix in the church. Cy, who was working with Wicks in his political career, swears Jud sold what was his, but he actually didn’t—it’s in the crucifix. The film ends with revealing that as he prepares for his first mass.

Overall Thoughts

I thought the mystery elements of the movie were well done, especially when it came to the big reveal. All of the Knives Out movies have some great writing when it comes to the “who dunnit” aspects of the story. I was right when I predicted it though, but I could see how others were thrown off the trail somewhere along the way.

However, I felt like this movie was kind of lacking in term of pacing. It felt tired in some ways compared to the other movies in the franchise, which is not a great sign for it long term. Jud was the most interesting character of the group—there really wasn’t anyone else I found to be compelling enough to make me want to believe it wasn’t them. I simply did not care for a lot of these characters.

Don’t get me wrong—the actors did a great job. I just could not connect with this story and cast in a way where I could confidently say I thought this was a sound movie. It’s good a mystery, but beyond that it felt a little hollow to me.

Someone else might disagree, though! If you want to watch this and have the chance, definitely go for it. Sometimes movies are really meant to be watched, not read about on the Internet.

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