Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is a good mystery-comedy movie that lacks the whodunit

I can say with confidence that I’ve quite enjoyed the Knives Out movies. While being whodunit mystery movies, perhaps the aspect of these movies I enjoyed the most was the comedy; dark comedy delivered by a ensemble of A-list actors portraying a wide range of characters, that is how I remember these movies. While Glass Onion received some criticism from fans of the whodunit genre, I still enjoyed it even though it was inferior the first movie. Here were are now in 2025 with the third movie Wake Up Dead Man.

Unsurprising to anyone, the story of Wake Up Dead Man centres around a murder with peculiar circumstances. This time it is that of of the head priest Jefferson Wicks, who is found dead in his church as he was taking a break from a Sunday mass in what seems to be an impossible murder. While there is no evidence, those dedicated to Wicks believe that the new priest assigned to the church, Jud Duplenticy, is the murderer. The police chief recognizing that she may need help calls detective Blanc to assist her in the case. Now Blanc must work Jud to find the real culprit, someone likely from the worshipers who were in the church that day, and to prove Jud’s innocence.

What was most surprising to me was the structure of the movie. Detective Blanc doesn’t enter the frame until a good while into the movie. During this time it is Jud that is laying out the plot through voice over, introducing us to the characters and giving the history before the murder took place. Detective Blanc’s charisma, portrayed by Daniel Craig, is a big part of the entertainment in the movies, but his initial absence did not bother me much. Probably because I was busy being presented the set up and the characters, which is all done with a good pace and a good amount of comedy.

The comedy is thankfully still there. With the murder having took place in a church, there are some jokes that are related to the church and religion but they are not too much and overstay their welcome. While the beginning of the movie is the funniest, I felt that it became less frequent as the movie went on. Probably because after the set up the movie now has the balance the mystery solving and dramatic moments and investigations with the comedy. Even while the comedy was less frequent, most of the jokes landed and managed to get a good chuckle out of me.

So the comedy is good, but what about the mystery solving aspect of the movie? While I do not remember details of the previous movie, to me Wake Up Dead Man felt more …… crazy for lack of a better word. As the story unfolds and Blanc tries to solve the murder, things happen that really left me scratching my head. In that way the movie was very engaging and had me hooked. Small progressions are always made in solving the mystery but those then bring up more questions or are rended illogical by a twist/unforeseen event. Though it is not perfect. There are some things that some might consider plot holes, some things that don’t make sense even with the logic of the movie and the world. There is one specifically that bothered me and I could not stop thinking about it. That was in the moment as I was watching the movie. After I had finished watching the movie I was entertained enough to let these mistakes slide but I can understand how these might take some viewers out of the movie and even lower it in terms of quality.

While the engagement of the plot and its events are positive, they do expose a weakness of the movie: the group of suspects. As the plot thickened, the question in my mind was not “Who is responsible for the murder” but rather “How have these things happened”. You can say that these two questions go hand in hand in a mystery movie like this, but they felt disconnected here. Maybe this can help clarify what I mean: when during the finale is revealed who is responsible, I was not surprised and I did not think to myself “So it was YOU all along!” because I was more interested in the explanation of how certain event were able to take place the way they did. The movie does present a reason to suspect everyone but I did not find myself ever thinking about which suspect was responsible. I think this is partly due to the fact that the group of suspects is not that interesting and I did not care about them, nor was I really interested in finding out which one of them is the culprit. I can’t pin point exactly why but that is the way I feel.

Which is a shame because the cast is full of good actors including Josh O’Connor, Andrew Scot, Cailee Spaeny and Kerry Washington to name a few. While the entire cast did a decent job, Josh Brolin as Wicks and Glenn Close as Martha (Wicks’s assistant), stole the show for me. This is impressive as while Daniel Craig and Josh O’Connor have the most screen time, it were the aforementioned actors that shined the most and had the best performances. I still love Detective Blanc and the way he is played by Daniel Craig but in this movie he was outshined, no thanks to his absence from the beginning of the movie.

The last thing I wanna discuss is the direction of the movie and how it was shot. When I think of the previous movies I don’t necessarily recall the cinematography and how well they looked, but in Wake Up Dead Man these elements definitely caught my eye. Generally speaking the movie looks good in a safe way and there is nothing extraordinary about it, but there are small details throughout the movie and how it is shot that make you appreciate the movie more if you spot them. Other than the small details, there are specific sequences that are really creative when it comes to conveying a message or setting a tone. These sequences make use of lights and camera movements in ways that I do not know the name for, but can for sure appreciate them. Also, the movie makes good use of the weather. I’m not sure how much of the weather is natural and how much artificial, but the weather is used expertly to mark shifts in tone or revelations in characters. You will notice these when watching the movie and I think I will notice more details and small ways in which the weather added something to a scene.

Glass onion came out 3 years ago and Knives out in 2019, so I can’t make dependable comparisons between this movie and its predecessors. Judging Wake Up Dead Man on its own, it is a solid movie. At this point I think Rian Johnson has been able to put Star Wars The Last Jedi behind him and deliver a movie with actual good twist and subvert expectations in a way that doesn’t frustrate the audience. The characters leave something to be desired and the mistakes in the writing can be found if you look closely, but they don’t retract from the entertainment that the movie was able to provide with its cast, writing, great comedy and good cinematography.