Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery and all the images you see in this review are owned by Netflix
Directed by Rian Johnson
The thing about the Knives Out series is that you never seem to get what you wanted going into it, and yet it still manages to come around to being a great movie. The first one revealed its mystery fairly early on but managed to have enough twists and turns to keep you guessing until the end, and while its sequel was a bit messier with an oddly underwhelming denouement for its own mystery, it’s a well-made Whodunit that worked even better for me on a second viewing. Rian Johnson is definitely doing something interesting with these Benoit Blanc mysteries, but can this latest entry in the series be yet another masterful take on the classic genre, or have the gimmicks gotten staler than the corpses Blanc is sent to investigate? Let’s find out!!
In a sleepy rural town somewhere in upstate New York, a young priest has been transferred in after an altercation with a deacon and is now under the watchful eye of Monsignor Wicks (Josh Brolin); an ornery man with a childish sense of humor and a teenage view on the world. His fire and brimstone sermons are a hit with his core fan base which includes the local church lady Martha (Glenn Close), the town doctor (Jeremy Renner), a conspiracy writer (Andrew Scott), a disabled violinist looking for a cure (Cailee Spaeny), and a mother and son who don’t get along (Kerry Washington and Daryl McCormack), but to the newly arrived Father Jed (Josh O’Connor), they seem to be alienating these people rather than helping the community. Still, at least it leaves the suspect count low when the Monsignor dies during the Good Friday service and Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is called in to investigate. All suspicions seem to land on poor Father Jed as he’s the only one who was not a fan of the Monsignor, and as evidence mounts against him, it’s up to Blanc to cut through the hysteria and histrionics to find the truth. Who is truly responsible for the death of Monsignor Wicks, and will the investigation uncover unsavory truths about him and this community? Can Blanc and Jed get along despite coming from such vastly different worlds, and what will this case reveal within both of them that neither wishes to face head on? Maybe the secret Jed wishes to hide is that he’s really good at playing Bad Cop when they start interviewing suspects.
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