By Marc S. Sanders
Benoit Blanc is back with a new mystery to solve in Wake Up Dead Man. With three films, all directed by Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Glass Onion), Daniel Craig’s eccentric detective now belongs in the ranks of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. He’s a pleasure to watch with a smirk on your face. Ironically, he doesn’t make his entrance until at least a third of the picture is complete.
Josh O’Connor is Father Jud Duplenticy who first reveals a wide berth of exposition ahead of the murder mystery that awaits us. He’s a catholic priest who works hard to contain his temper that might resort to raising his fists. He’s been assigned as the assistant minister to a church in a small New England town where everyone knows one another, especially repulsive Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin).
Whodunit mysteries should never be spoiled. I certainly wouldn’t imply how this film wraps up. I also do not want to reveal who the victim(s) is/are. I urge you to see Wake Up The Dead Man because this puzzler of a story is as gleeful as the title itself.
Like the Agatha Christie film adaptations from the 1970s, Rian Johnson does his best to provide a lineup of suspects with celebrity familiarity including Brolin, O’Connor, Mila Kunis, Kerry Washington, Thomas Hayden Church, Cailee Spaeny, Jeremy Renner and a standout performance from Glenn Close who steals much of the film away from the rest of the cast. After seven nominations spanning over forty years, give her the Oscar already. She’s eerie and needling, spooky and fun. As Detective Blanc continues his investigation, a character tells him this all seems like something straight out of Scooby Doo. Glenn Close, donned in black with an elderly bleached facade certainly feels like she’d come in contact with the animated pup and those meddling kids.
Rian Johnson writes with that classic narrative that Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle adopted, only it’s modernized. The director of The Last Jedi even throws in a Star Wars reference and the joke soars. The writer/director crafted this script as an invitation for hair raising merriment with his design. If you can’t be a part of a mystery dinner theater party, he ensures that you can participate in this one.
An old church, priests who curse, habitually pleasure themselves and confess to an abundance of sins, a gothic tomb, a dark basement with a repulsive bathtub, a bar with a photograph of clues, startling entrances, unconventional dialogue and a quizzical murder weapon function like page turning literature. Even better is to understand how impossible the first murder can be under the limitations of a locked door mystery. How can someone be killed right in front of our eyes when no one else is in room? The answers await and thankfully the revelations are not far-fetched.
Wake Up Dead Man is a fun time at the movies. It’s coming to Netflix on December 12, 2025. Nevertheless, I encourage you to go your local cinema. The crowd we saw it with was responding consistently with us, and that only enhances the experience.
2 UNPAID MOVIE CRITICS!!!! 