Review by Michelle Chun
I’ve always loved a good mystery, and Rian Johnson has not disappointed with Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. Honestly, it slaps. It’s sharp, witty and held together by an amazing cast. As a lover of mysteries, it was a great movie. As a believer, this whodunnit took Christianity and like a diamond, held it up to the light.
But first, the premise. Daniel Craig returns as Benoit Blanc, a straight-talking detective (and proud unbeliever) investigating a “perfectly impossible crime” in a quiet Catholic church with a dark past. Its charismatic priest, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) leads a small, tight-knit band of parishioners, as faithful to and fearful of Wicks as they are God.
Along comes Father Jud Duplencity, stumbling and sincere in his efforts to shepherd a hardened, bitter flock. However, his arrival, and the theology he professes, is unwelcome. Then, the perfectly impossible crime. A murder during mass. All hell breaks loose, and each character’s true motivations are quickly, or slowly, revealed.
The real investigation begins when police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis) calls Blanc in for help. It’s a thrilling ride through twists and turns as he untangles the truth from a sticky, messy web of faith, fact and the selfish, human heart.
But what was infinitely more astounding was how this film (with elements of gothic horror) managed to reveal the strain the modern Church is under to remain faithful to the Gospel, to not shy away from speaking truth with grace. Holding this tightope are the two priests.
Wicks is hardcore and hardline, magnetic and openly disdainful of anyone he sees as unholy. On the other end is Jud, imperfect and earnest. Through him, grace and forgiveness shine against the bitter resentment and spiritual pride that had engulfed the church. Then, there’s Blanc. “God is a fiction,” he says, echoing the many skeptics of the faith today. Aat the end of the film, he cooly brushes off an invitation to attend mass. “There’s nothing I would rather not do,” he quips.
At the macro level, Wicks and Jud are resonant of the way churches live out Christianity today — one too distasteful for the skeptic, the other too unattractive. Caught in the crossfire are the parishioners, each with a story that may feel like a mirror of our own varied lives — the wrestle through doubt, suffering, ego and everything in-between.
Without trying to, Wake Up Dead Man has achieved what many ‘Christian movies’ have struggled to do: make Christianity worth thinking about again. For the believer, to check if we have drifted away from the true Gospel. For the critic, to wonder if the Christianity they know is Christianity at all.
Wake Up Dead Man stops short of showing us what true Christianity could look like, but it is a wake-up call. It’s also wildly entertaining, incredibly moving and worth a watch.
Wake Up Dead Man is on Netflix.
