<\/p>\n
This will be a spoiler-free review of Wake Up Dead Man<\/em>. Mostly.<\/p>\n We will tell you that it is Rian Johnson\u2019s third movie in his murder-mystery franchise involving a deductive sleuth mixing it up with a host of classic murder-mystery archetypes. We will list its cast members, which \u2014 as with Johnson\u2019s previous excursions into a musty genre he has almost singlehandedly woken up from the dead, Knives Out<\/em> (2019) and Glass Onion<\/em> (2022) \u2014 is a truly all-star affair. Two big-time Joshs, O\u2019Connor and Brolin, are in it. So is Glenn Close, Andrew Scott, Kerry Washington, Jeffrey Wright, Jeremy Renner, Thomas Haden Church, Mila Kunis, Cailee Spaeny (Priscilla<\/em>), and Daryl McCormack (Good Luck to You, Leo Grande).<\/em> And, of course, it features Daniel Craig, still playing Benoit Blanc, the world\u2019s greatest detective, or at least a detective that would place high on Top 10 Greatest Detectives, as a Sondheim-loving Southern dandy with impeccable taste in three-piece suits.<\/p>\n More from Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n We may mention in passing that its underwritten by Netflix, and that their continued distribution of Johnson\u2019s series almost makes up for the fact that they continually foist \u201ccontent\u201d like Red Notice<\/em> and The Electric State<\/em> on us with numbing regularity. (Almost.) We will duly note it\u2019s 144 minutes long, including credits.<\/p>\n What we won\u2019t do is reveal the parties responsible for any and all crimes committed within this old-fashioned potboiler, but then again, who done it is usually the least interesting part of any real whodunnit. You do not need to have read every Agatha Christie novel twice, or own a comically large magnifying glass and deerstalker cap, or even be a filmmaker who can somehow spin gold out of century-old clich\u00e9s and red herrings and the pulpiest of pulp-fiction tropes, to recognize that it\u2019s always the journey, not the destination that matters when it comes to this literary staple. You might not remember who killed Roger Ackroyd or whether Colonel Mustard met his maker in the billiards room with a lead pipe. But you almost certainly recall the sense of engagement you felt when you\u2019re in the hands of someone who truly understands the give-and-take game in this mode of storytelling. There are always two people solving a whodunnit\u2019s central puzzle: the professional detective on the page or screen, and the reader\/viewer filtering through clues along with them.<\/p>\n Johnson was a fan of Christie, et al., long before he started constructing twisty, turn-filled narratives around Craig\u2019s natty gumshoe, and his scholarship around these tales of mystery and imagination is matched only by his affection for them. Before Dead Man<\/em>\u2018s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival Saturday night, he mentioned that the previous films fell into the well-worn categories of the family-estate murder and the vacation whodunnit. Number Three belongs to a deeper subgenre within the canon: the church murder mystery. He also namechecked G.K. Chesterton, Edgar Allen Poe and John Dickson Carr\u2019s The Hollow Man,<\/em> a classic of the \u201clocked room\u201d homicide variety; a dog-eared paperback edition of that book plays a key part, in fact. Johnson thus drops a few hints as to what he\u2019s channeling here, in terms of influences, styles and even bigger-picture concerns. The game\u2019s now afoot.<\/p>\n Once upon a time, Father Jud Duplenticy (O\u2019Connor, again convincing you that he\u2019s one of the most interesting actors working today) was a boxer. An accident led him to the priesthood, but old habits like cold-cocking assholes still die hard. So his superior (Wright) transfers this man of the cloth to a parish in the quaint New York town of Chimney Rock. His new home is the Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, a church ruled with a iron fist by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Brolin). He isn\u2019t overjoyed at having another clergyman sitting at his right hand, yet that doesn\u2019t stop him tending to his flock. Wicks\u2019 sermons tend toward the extreme fire-and-brimstone, vengeance-is-mine variety. His appearance could be characterized as Jesus with stronger jawline. Any resemblance to real-life megalomaniacal blowhards in positions of power are anything but coincidental.<\/p>\n Long story short, Wicks finds himself entering the kingdom of heaven sooner than anticipated. (Look, the word \u201cmostly\u201d is in that above paragraph about spoilers for a reason. We gave you all the clues, Mister Police!) The suspects, naturally, are many, and include a MAGA-friendly sci-fi author (Scott), a heartbroken doctor (Renner), a grudge-holding lawyer (Washington), a politically ambitious influencer (McCormack), a cellist (Spaeny) in need of a miracle, the parish\u2019s groundskeeper (Church), and the most pious woman (Close) in town. Oh, and Duplenticy, of course. He\u2019s actually the most obvious candidate for being the culprit behind \u201cthe Good Friday Murder,\u201d given his checkered past, his anger issues and the fact that he was filmed threatening Wicks. Enter Benoit Blanc.<\/p>\n Despite a brief glimpse of our man Blanc at the very beginning, reading through a letter that details the wheredunnit and howdunnit and several intriguing theories behind a possible whydunnit, Craig\u2019s master investigator doesn\u2019t truly show up until almost an hour in to Wake Up Dead Man. <\/em>He then proceeds to make up for lost time via a good amount of hamming it up and giving viewers 10ccs of the character\u2019s patented mix of Hercule Poirot, Lt. Columbo, Jessica Fletcher, and Foghorn Leghorn. The evident fun that the actor is having onscreen is infectious, and even if he wasn\u2019t playing against associations with other, more iconic characters \u2014 no names mentioned \u2014 the anything-goes aspect of his collaboration with Johnson fits the actor\u2019s strengths like the sleuth\u2019s well-tailored suits. Craig is still playing within the genre\u2019s parameters, yet the color he brings to Blanc remains a key part of why these movies work as well as they do.<\/p>\n Everyone seems to be having a blast, and the filmmaker knows how to take both the ensemble he\u2019s assembled and his congregation of Knives Out<\/em> fans \u2014 call us Blanc-heads \u2014 to church, literally and figuratively. (All of the cast is on point here, though we should point out that both O\u2019Connor and Close are tied for first among equals here.) Johnson also knows how let a sermon play in the muted background of his murder mystery rather than jockeying for space with a story, and unlike Glass Onion,<\/em> which occasionally fell victim to a little too much nudge-wink direct messaging about the rich and infamous, Wake Up <\/em>plays things closer to the vestment.<\/p>\n And yet: A dead man could see that Wicks is not just a holy terror but a cult leader in all but name. He\u2019s not exactly appealing to folks\u2019 better angels, and he treats his desire to force a dangerously reactionary agenda on people as if he\u2019s been given a mandate from God. Like many of the telltale clues that will help Blanc solve the case, the resemblance is hiding in plain sight. And while this is designed as an entertainment, there\u2019s a sneaking suspicion that, when all is said and done, the creators of this romp through religious murder-mystery riffing would very much like people to clock how certain strains of manipulation work and wake the fuck up.<\/p>\n Best of Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for RollingStone’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This will be a spoiler-free review of Wake Up Dead Man. Mostly. We will tell you that it is Rian Johnson\u2019s third movie in his murder-mystery franchise involving a deductive sleuth mixing it up with a host of classic murder-mystery archetypes. We will list its cast members, which \u2014 as with Johnson\u2019s previous excursions into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2004159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[360421,350618,315331,365088,361555,364691,361780,343019,348063,315569,360420,360422,331372,360419,360426,364823],"class_list":["post-2004158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-andrew-scott","tag-cailee-spaeny","tag-daniel-craig","tag-daryl-mccormack","tag-edgar-allen-poe","tag-glass-onion","tag-glenn-close","tag-jeffrey-wright","tag-jeremy-renner","tag-kerry-washington","tag-knives-out","tag-monsignor-jefferson-wicks","tag-murder-mystery","tag-rian-johnson","tag-thomas-haden-church","tag-wake-up-dead-man"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/\u2018Wake-Up-Dead-Man-Takes-Murder-Mystery-Fans-to-Church-Literally.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2004158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2004158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2004159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2004158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2004158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2004158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}