Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man- Review
“Please! Don’t spoil the Who-Dunnit-Of The Year! It’s the only Who-Dunnit-Of-The-Year! Don’t tell us Who-Dun-It!”
No worries, I don’t have that kind of time. Once again, as to be expected, Rian Johnson’s newest Who-Dunnit,Wake Up Dead Man, is as dense and complex as any movie you will ever see. It’s a riveting mystery that digs deep into it’s setting and context, exploring religion, family, trauma, faith, literature…yeah it’s a lot. Rian Johnson is a fabulous writer and director, but he’s never made something you can digest easily. Whether you like it or not, you’re in for a ride and there’s a strong possibility that at some point, you simply won’t know what is going on. That’s okay. After seeing a few of these I can safely assume that’s kind of the point.
Wake Up Dead Man is the serious one of this trilogy (so far), but it also seems to have a lot more to say. While Glass Onion was a delightful and actually kind of breezy viewing, Wake Up Dead Man is a very glum, austere experience in some ways. It’s not as funny or whimsical as the previous two and it’s pacing doesn’t feel nearly as smooth. It lurches forward from character to character, with context often indistinguishable from plot points and vice versa. But this isn’t a bug- it’s a feature. The way this mystery unspools is much more disjointed and sporadic than the previous films. Sometimes, 5 minutes can unpack a bunch of pivotal clues and other times it’s 15 minutes that bear no fruit. And for much of the film, you don’t really know which is which, or what to watch for. That is part of a mystery film, but I think the dour characters and setting make it more pronounced and uneasy here.
Wake Up Dead Man is about a young priest, Father Judd (Josh O’Connor), who gets assigned to a church in upstate New York, which is run by an enigmatic and batshit insane Monsignor Wicks (Josh Brolin). Monsignor Wicks, who has a distinctly doom-ish and iconoclastic way of doing Catholicism, has cultivated a unique and strange flock of people. There’s Martha (Glen Close), the loyal and dogmatic Church secretary, Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny), a violinist wracked with chronic pain, Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church), the groundskeeper, Dr. Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), the town doctor and many others. Mila Kunis is in this film as well, playing a cop investigating the murder. It’s a talented and diverse cast that brings measured and strong performances to Johnson’s shady characters. We meet these characters, and their sad, suspicious pasts, all in the first 30 minutes or so and at this point we’re waiting for the “Dun-It” in the “Who-Dunn-it”
Well…. a few weeks or so of oddness at this church, during which Father Judd slowly becomes ostracized and distrusted, Monsignor Wick is murdered in a seemingly empty room. And young Father Judd is Suspect Number One. It seems hopeless. Surely he must have done it! But out of nowhere, there he is- the illustrious Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig). The James Bond actor is back in his less serious (but more fun) role as the folksy intellectual gay Southern detective. And when he shows up, about 30 minutes in, the film starts to gain some momentum. I admit, I sat up at this point forward.
Wake Up Dead Man’s pacing is only a little different from the previous films structurally, but the way it feels is a drastic contrast, which I attribute to the characters. Undoubtedly interesting and different at face value, I felt like this set of suspects was less compelling than previous films, in part because the way they interact with our leads is ultimately less diverse. All of these characters are hiding from something, whether current or in the past and while their on-screen reservations blend well with the themes of religion and the question of redemption, as an entertainment piece, it’s not as strong in my opinion. In some cases, you boil the characters real interest down and it’s shallower than you would expect or hope for.
That being said, this is an expertly made film and the way it moves around it’s story and world keep you on your toes. The way it portrays modern upstate New York, as this sort of bleary backwater where educated outcasts go to hide and search for penance, makes the whole thing feel a little larger than life. It may not jump out at you as much as the island in Glass Onion did, but it kind of creeps along with the tension of the movie. The dark forests, lonely roads and quaint river town feel a little Lovecraftian. As with any mystery with such an environment, at one point, it really seemed like the supernatural was in play here.
Overall I think this is another very strong add to Rian Johnson’s filmography (including The Last Jedi) and I think credit has to be given to a guy who’s created his own niche, in a genre that barely gets movies anymore…and he crushes it. It’s another compelling argument for the idea that Rian Johnson is one of the best mystery storytellers of the modern era.
