Wake Up Dead Man: (2025)

Rian Johnson sends Benoit Blanc to church this time, which feels either inspired or slightly perverse depending on your tolerance for murder mysteries that want to talk about faith. The setting is a small Catholic parish in upstate New York, where the pews are emptying and the monsignor preaches contempt. Gone is the sun-drenched frivolity of Glass Onion. This one’s cold, overcast, and noticeably heavier in spirit.

Father Jud Duplenticy gets reassigned after punching a deacon, which tells you something important about his character straight away. He’s a former boxer who killed a man in the ring, turned priest, now trying to embody grace instead of violence. His new posting puts him under Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, played by Josh Brolin as the kind of clerical bully who uses righteousness as a weapon. Wicks drives parishioners away with his venom, railing against gay people and single mothers from the pulpit, maintaining power through fear and shame. When he collapses dead in a locked viewing chamber during a service, with the entire congregation present as potential suspects, Blanc shows up to investigate what becomes one of his most elaborately impossible cases.

Josh O’Connor gives what I’d call the performance of the film. Maybe the performance of the entire franchise, actually. His Jud radiates sincerity without crossing into naïveté, wrestling visibly with anger he doesn’t fully understand and faith he genuinely holds. The character provides the film’s moral compass, which matters considerably when Johnson starts probing the space between belief and scepticism, forgiveness and justice. Brolin delivers grotesque charisma as Wicks, though the monsignor occasionally reads more as ideological target than fully imagined human being.

Craig remains a treasure, even if Blanc takes his time appearing. When he does, the friction between the faithless detective and the believing priest generates some genuinely interesting sparks. Johnson seems authentically curious about what happens when rigorous logic encounters genuine spirituality, and he resists the urge to declare an easy victor. That restraint deserves acknowledgement.

The supporting cast features Glenn Close, Mila Kunis, Kerry Washington, and Jeremy Renner as various parishioners nursing grievances, secrets, and competing ambitions. They’re all professionally competent without being particularly memorable. The film works best in its two-handers between O’Connor and Craig, less so when trying to service a crowded ensemble where most characters feel more functional than flesh-and-blood.

Steve Yedlin’s cinematography captures upstate New York’s austere beauty with real skill. Light breaking through stained glass becomes a recurring visual motif, offering moments of grace against the prevailing gloom. The production design commits fully to gothic atmosphere, occasionally threatening to swallow the human drama underneath all that architectural weight.

The mystery proves extremely intricate. Perhaps too intricate, if I’m being honest. Johnson constructs a locked-room puzzle so elaborate that solving it beforehand feels nearly impossible, which I suspect is intentional but doesn’t necessarily work in the film’s favour. The eventual explanation requires substantial exposition that some viewers will find intellectually rewarding and others might experience as overly laboured plot mechanics dressed up as revelation. I lean toward the latter camp, though reasonable people will differ.

What separates Wake Up Dead Man from its predecessors is an unexpected streak of optimism. Johnson examines contemporary fractures, the tribal anger poisoning communities, the way certainty masquerades as conviction. Rather than simply diagnosing these pathologies, though, the film argues for understanding over confrontation, for welcoming strangers instead of fortifying positions. It’s an almost startling gentleness for a murder mystery, and it doesn’t always mesh comfortably with the genre’s conventional pleasures.

At 144 minutes, the runtime makes its presence felt. Johnson seems more interested in contemplation than momentum, using the detective framework to explore substantial themes about faith, anger, and communal division. Sometimes this pays dividends, particularly in scenes where O’Connor and Craig spar intellectually. Other times it feels like mistaking elaboration for insight, adding complexity where clarity might serve better.

If Glass Onion struck you as too lightweight, this offers considerably more heft. If you loved that film’s playful energy, this might feel ponderous by comparison. Johnson clearly wants to avoid repetition, which commands respect even when the execution doesn’t quite land. He’s attempting something genuinely ambitious here, trying to say something meaningful about the fractured world we inhabit without abandoning the pleasures of an elegantly constructed whodunit.

Does it succeed? Partially. The film doesn’t entirely reconcile its competing impulses between entertainment and examination, between solving the puzzle and pondering larger questions. But the attempt itself carries value, and O’Connor’s performance alone justifies the investment of time. Johnson’s technical mastery remains evident throughout, even when his thematic reach slightly exceeds what the narrative can comfortably support.

Wake Up Dead Man represents a franchise refusing to coast on formula, genuinely trying to evolve and address the cultural moment without becoming didactic. That ambition produces both the film’s greatest strengths and its occasional stumbles. It’s a more challenging, less immediately satisfying entry than either predecessor, which might actually be exactly what Johnson intended.