Although I enjoyed this third installment of the Benoit Blanc/Knives Out mysteries most of all, it’s also the one where Blanc (Daniel Craig) doesn’t show up until about 45 minutes into the film. It’s easily the darkest and most sinister of the three films, primarily because it’s the chapter that takes Blanc to his absolute limits as an investigator. And, it tests his spiritual core more than ever before, or more specifically, it tests his belief that spirituality is for the weak-minded and those missing something in their lives.
Again written and directed by Rian Johnson, Wake Up Dead Man centers primarily on a young priest named Jud Duplenticy (the hardest working man in show business, Josh O’Connor), who is sent to a small, upstate New York parish in the fictional town of Chimney Rock. He's there to assist the charismatic, firebrand Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), whose small but devoted congregation seems troubled, to say the least.
Among Wicks’ faithful are his devout church lady and right-hand Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close); circumspect groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church); tightly wound lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington), her son and aspiring politician Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack); town doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner); best-selling author and budding conspiracy theorist Lee Ross (Andrew Scott), and concert cellist and long-term illness sufferer Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny). Although this new priest is said to only be there to observe, Wicks and others suspect that his unconventional ways have made him a target of those overseeing his parish, and he does his best to make sure Duplenticy in no way feels at home.
As Wicks stacks up enemies, thinking he’s too big to fail (or die), he dies anyway in one of the most impossible ways imaginable. Naturally, everyone is a suspect, including the new priest, who knows enough about the world outside of Chimney Rock to call in the only man who could possibly solve the impossible crime: Blanc. With each new mystery, Craig’s Blanc seems a little more loose, disheveled, scattered, and uncertain about what he knows for certain. It’s a fascinating way to shift the personality of the character and still make him intriguing to the point where it’s impossible to remove your eyes from his mysterious process. For him, the case is less about whodunit and more about how.
In each of the Knives Out mysteries, Blanc finds the one person in the scenario that he can trust, and in this town, it’s the local police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis). While there is no obvious killer, the more that’s uncovered, the more it seems like Duplenticy is the one with the most motivation. And then, three days after the murder, Wicks’ body appears to disappear from his sealed crypt and throws everyone into a tizzy, most especially Blanc, whose skepticism about anything resembling faith is called into question. Seeing this master investigator doubt his own abilities is an electric thing, and Craig plays it deftly. This is not a man used to admitting—or even contemplating—defeat, yet here he is: stumped.
If you watch the Blanc films carefully, quite often he simply allows events to play out because usually the guilty party will reveal themselves as they attempt to cover up their crimes. But that’s not exactly what happens in Wake Up Dead Man. I’m not sure Johnson gives us enough clues to find the murderer on our own (that would require a second viewing on my part, which will happen soon), but that doesn’t make the mystery any less absorbing.
Since his feature film debut, Brick, I have admired the way that Rian Johnson’s mind works. His screenplays are magnificent, but he approaches each new one with a distinct voice, and I think that’s the most noticeable in the Knives Out films. They have the same central character, but each film feels like it exists in a different sub-genre of mystery stories. I hope he and Craig make these until they’re old and gray because they will continue to manipulate the form in every conceivable way (and a few inconceivable).
The film is now playing theatrically and will be available December 12 to stream on Netflix.
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