The faint outline of a cross—similar to what’s left behind when a long-hanging picture is taken off a wall—marks the sanctuary of Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude in Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. It’s an appropriately startling image for this twisty murder mystery, which makes a provocative claim: that something essential is missing from the most prominent expressions of American Christianity these days.
Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), the brilliantly logical detective of writer-director Rian Johnson’s mystery series, would hardly seem to be the person to point this out. “I kneel at the altar of the rational,” he declares early on in Wake Up Dead Man. This sentiment should surprise no one who watched him employ steely reason to solve complex crimes in both 2019’s Knives Out and 2022’s Glass Onion. But this time, he runs up against a case that involves a complicating factor: faith.
That would be the “Good Friday murder,” in which the controversial priest at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude (Josh Brolin) steps into a closet just off the sanctuary during a service to take a short break, suddenly falls over, and is discovered to somehow have been stabbed in the back. The suspects include those in the pews, played by the likes of Glenn Close, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Thomas Haden Church, and Daryl McCormack. Suspicion also shifts to the recently appointed assistant, Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor), who was known to have clashed with his now-deceased colleague over the latter’s increasingly angry, hateful, and politicized preaching.
Considering Mila Kunis is also on hand as the local police chief, there are perhaps too many characters at play here. None of them register as strongly as those in the original Knives Out, where the relational intrigue of that plot was driven by intimate family dynamics. As such, the mystery—while still precisely engineered—requires a greater suspension of disbelief, particularly in terms of motive. But maybe that’s the point, as Wake Up Dead Man poses a related question: how much faith should one put in faith, as a way of living out one’s life?
Blanc, amusingly, arrives on the scene as a literal answer to prayer—while Father Jud is on his knees in the sanctuary, distraught over his predecessor’s death and the ensuing fallout. Blanc—immediately uncomfortable in this sacred space— responds to Jud’s gentle welcome with a long and bitter rant about religion as an “ornery mule,” built on nothing but myths, stories, and lies. (This is the most emotional we’ve seen Blanc onscreen yet.) Jud suggests that perhaps the stories resonate because they touch on something within the human heart that is “profoundly true”—an opinion seemingly supported by the sunlight that streams through the stained-glass window behind him, casting itself onto Blanc’s face.
Jud, however, is no saint. We learn early on that he has a temper (a confrontation with a deacon led to his demotion as the assistant at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude). Indeed, a fatal mistake in his past brought him to the priesthood, where he still wrestles with accepting his own forgiveness. As such, his conversation with Blanc comes off not as a “gotcha” bit of apologetics, but rather Jud’s sincere attempt to reassure himself. (Notice the tears welling up in Jud’s eyes as he talks.)
O’Connor (Challengers, The Mastermind) gives a remarkable performance, tapping into Father Jud’s spiritual struggle while also nimbly managing the movie’s sense of humor (Jud has a flair for swearing and at one point describes himself as “young, dumb, and full of Christ.”) As opposed to the condemnation and division preached by his predecessor, Jud tries to share a message of healing and grace; O’Connor’s best moments are when Jud experiences that message for himself. The standout scene in Wake Up Dead Man—which I won’t spoil in detail—comes when Jud and Blanc are on the verge of a major clue and they’re interrupted by a prayer request. Jud reluctantly offers to help and ends up being nourished in the process. (Blanc’s frustrated impatience in that moment captures their philosophical differences in miniature.)
Fear not, Wake Up Dead Man is no dry theological treatise. More often than not, Johnson uses the religious setting for sharp gags (as the title implies, he gets a lot of mileage out of resurrection imagery). O’Connor and Craig make a smart comic team—especially in the scenes where Jud plays Watson to Blanc’s Holmes—while a handful of early confession scenes between O’Connor and Brolin play like a raunchy vaudeville routine. For the uninitiated, Johnson even offers a handy Holy Week calendar graphic that made me giggle.
Undoubtedly, though, the movie’s religious curiosity is its hallmark. By the end of Wake Up Dead Man, a painstakingly hand-carved crucifix hangs on the sanctuary wall, one that better represents the love, sacrifice, and forgiveness that defines Christianity above all else. Along the way, things may have even shifted a bit within Blanc, at least in terms of his animosity toward the faith. Don’t count it as a conversion, though. This is a man who won’t fully believe until he meets a mystery he can’t solve.
(12/3/2025)
