“Wake Up Dead Man” is a big step up from “Glass Onion,” the second installment in director Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” trilogy. It sports a thoroughly committed performance from Josh O’Connor as the priest who narrates its locked-room mystery. As a comedy that delights in its twists, it’s a very enjoyable 140 minutes, and it digs surprisingly far into an exploration of Christian notions of forgiveness. Yet it continues a more disheartening tendency running through “Knives Out” and “Glass Onion”: a leaning towards social commentary that amounts to performative liberalism. In this case, it pushes detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), revealed to be gay in “Glass Onion,” back into the closet.
Jud (O’Connor) is a priest who’s sent to a small town in upstate New York. He’s a former boxer trying to get away from his violent background. Monsignor Wick (Josh Brolin) lords over this tiny parish. His conservative tendencies have alienated many churchgoers, forcing it to rely on one woman’s financial assistance. Following a murder, Jud becomes the prime suspect, but this is just the start of a very elaborate set of twists. Benoit makes a belated entrance, announcing his atheism and contempt for Christianity to Jud.
“Wake Up Dead Man” starts as a light comedy, and it largely sticks to that direction. When first introduced, the parishioners of the church are defined by their idiosyncracies. Most of these are negative. Lee (out actor Andrew Scott) has destroyed his career as a respected science fiction writer after tumbling down a far right rabbit hole. He’s now so paranoid he built a moat around his house, while he whines about needing to earn an income on Substack. Cy (Daryl McCormack) is a failed politician turned influencer. He records Wick’s sermons so he can chop their most reactionary words for use on his YouTube channel, where he posts gems like “G-O-D in D-O-G-E.”
Wick is fleshed out a bit more, but his bitterness still sums up his entire character. Giving his first confession to Jud, he tells elaborate stories of frequent masturbation, designed for shock value. Jud later learns that they’re false. His sermons quickly stray from the subject of Christian ethics and turn into rants about how single mothers are evil harpies destroying their children. This theme comes from a very personal place.
Jud gets the grace of being developed into a three-dimensional person. For a priest, his neck tattoo leaps out, and it’s not the only one on his body. O’Connor has specialized in playing brooding, troubled men. As he showed in his more taciturn performance in Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind,” he can turn down his charisma, but he has considerable charm. Jud is one of his best roles.
Craig has a lot more fun with his performance. Benoit wears a trenchcoat over a tan 3-piece suit matching the blonde shade of his hair. Craig’s southern accent is ostentatiously phony, but he tears into his words with gusto. His resemblance to a preacher is accentuated. His interactions with Jud play out a dialogue about the nuances of faith.
“Glass Onion” marked this series’ rock bottom. Overly long and slowly paced, it also took toothless jabs at the evils of the ultra-wealthy. “Knives Out” was a lot more fun, but its political pretensions weren’t much more thought out. As critic Monica Castillo has noted, Ana de Arnas’ Latinx maid feels insulted when most characters choose a different country of origin of her, but the film shortchanges her by leaving out her actual background and turning something real immigrants experience into a joke.
These films’ topical gestures are their weakest component, but “Wake Up Dead Man” unwisely keeps them going. Wick’s sermons extend to homophobia. An interracial gay couple walk out of the church, one man extending a middle finger to him. When Cy runs down a list of right-wing talking points he tried to use to get elected, they include “pronouns.” One of his videos is “Non-Binary=Non-Godly.”
This dimension is contradicted by the rest of the film. In a brief scene during “Glass Onion,” the audience got to see Benoit’s partner, played by Hugh Grant. While the film’s queer elements were minimal, Craig and Johnson have both stated that Benoit is gay. There’s something to be said for how casually “Glass Onion” treats his sexuality. It’s a fact of life, not a shattering revelation about his character. However, since this is an ongoing series, one would like to see further developments. With “Wake Up Dead Man,” the text is back to subtext. Benoit cites homophobia as one of his objections to Christianity. His atheism comes out of religious trauma, but unless you’ve seen “Glass Onion,” the personal nature of this is not fully spelled out.
Coming from the corporation that pays Dave Chappelle $20 million for his bigoted comedy specials, this film’s mockery of Cy is appallingly hypocritical. 11 months into the second Trump regime, “Wake Up Dead Man” suggests a far more closeted American pop culture. Wave goodbye to mainstream representation! You were lip service most of the time, but we’ll miss you when you’re completely gone.
“Wake Up Dead Man” | Directed by Rian Johnson | Netflix | Streams Dec. 12th
