‘Uneven’ church-set Wake Up Dead Man delighted me with Benoit Blanc’s secret fandom

Daniel Craig’s gentleman detective Benoit Blanc is back once again for Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, the third entry in writer-director Rian Johnson’s Netflix franchise, which has revitalised the murder mystery genre for movies.

Known for twists in cases and teases around Blanc’s personal life – it now turns out he’s an epically nerdy musical theatre fan – Knives Out 3 has the rich and shocking crime location of a church.

But while Johnson has plenty to comment on with that setting in today’s political climate, he doesn’t quite manage to line it up with a collection of absorbing enough characters.

It’s an impressive ensemble of actors that’s been gathered, from Glenn Close to Josh O’Connor, and Jeremy Renner to Kerry Washington and Josh Brolin, and they all know the type of movie they’re in: sometimes dramatic, sometimes arch, sometimes camp.

By now it’s clear that Johnson has a passion for crafting an entertaining and winding whodunnit – and this outing is perhaps his ‘cosiest’ murder yet, given its church community setting.

But unfortunately Wake Up Dead Man fails to live up to some of its promise, particularly when dragging audiences through its convoluted and rather boring second act.

While it’s odd to describe a murder mystery as joyful, this is exactly the quality the film sometimes appears to be missing – its sense of fun – outside the witty one-liners.

Wake Up Dead Man is largely a two-hander between Craig’s Blanc and O’Connor as Rev. Judd Duplenticy, an ex-boxer described as ‘young, dumb and full of Christ’, who punches an unpopular deacon.

For his sin(s), he finds himself banished to a small Catholic community in upstate New York, overseen by the domineering Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Brolin) and devoted right-hand woman Martha Delacroix (Close).

Wicks immediately reveals his eccentricities when he spews an unhinged confession to the freshly-arrived Duplenticy about masturbation while his new assistant desperately tries to find his feet.

He is then swiftly killed off, with the rest of the town’s community introduced as possible suspects, from Washington’s brittle lawyer Vera and her half-brother Cy (Daryl McCormack) – a gilet-wearing failed political candidate who’s tried spouting forth on all the hot-button ‘things’ including book banning, Israel, 5G conspiracies and trans representation – to Renner as sad and recently-separated town doctor Nat, Andrew Scott as a washed-up sci-fi author, Cailee Spaeny as a retired cellist and Mila Kunis as the local police chief.

It’s 40 minutes before Blanc actually enters the picture to begin his detective work, showing off a new shaggy-haired look and happily announcing himself as a ‘proud heretic’.

Religion and judgement provide fertile ground for the film as Wake Up Dead Man examines hypocrisies and known failings of the Catholic Church with a cheeky, sharp edge. However, Johnson – himself raised a Catholic – toes the line carefully between skewering and respect.

It also has fun with other references, from Scooby Doo to the whole community taking note of Oprah’s recommendations for murder mysteries to read for their book club. 

We also get some new glimpses of Blanc’s personal life and hobbies following on from 2022’s Glass Onion, with some beautifully unexpected uses of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s back catalogue – including one of the coolest moments on a church organ in recent cinema history. 

Craig and O’Connor enjoy good odd couple energy as the film’s central double act, playing nicely off the fact that while Duplenticy looks like the guiltiest of them all when it comes to Wicks’ murder, he is also the most normal man in town – and desperate to clear his name.

Their partnership does sadly leave less time on screen for the supporting characters, which feels like a big missed opportunity given the calibre of their combined talent.

Blanc faces his trickiest and most delicate case yet in Wake Up Dead Man, even announcing at one point that he doesn’t think he can solve it. This feels evident in the drag of the film’s central act as it flits between introducing everyone alongside the murder, before others start being picked off. 

More could have been done in less time, given the film’s 144-minute duration, as my attention disappointingly began to drift.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is out in select cinemas from Wednesday, November 24. It streams exclusively on Netflix from December 12.

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