A Catholic priest is killed in what appears to be an impossible fashion. It’s up to famed detective Benoit Blanc to put the pieces together and track down the culprit. Wake Up Dead Man comes with a dispiriting amount of sexual content and a ratings-pushing level of language. But its spiritual themes might just spark some healthy conversation—among adults.
Father Jud did not kill his boss. Absolutely, positively not.
Oh, don’t raise your eyebrows. He knows he looks guilty. Father Jud was the only one nearby when his earthly boss, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, was stabbed in the back. Father Jud was the only person out of site for so much as a moment—besides, of course, Wicks himself. And Father Jud seems like the only guy who wanted Wicks dead at all.
But Jud swears he didn’t kill the man. Really, really, he didn’t.
Benoit Blanc believes him. And Blanc should know.
Blanc isn’t just some of run-of-the-mill gumshoe. He’s just about the most famous detective on the planet. He cracks cases like most people crack pistachios. He throws more people in jail than Pat Mahomes throws footballs. No case is too difficult for the man, no set of clues too convoluted.
But this case? Why, it just might be the most challenging of Blanc’s career. Here’s a respected, charismatic priest who’s killed during Mass. And in a storage closet right off the sanctuary, too—one with no other access points. Even Father Jud would’ve had just seconds to do the deed.
That theory might’ve held water … except that everyone in the church heard Wicks fall before Jud would’ve had those seconds.
But someone sure killed Wicks, that’s for sure. Who could it have been? The parish’s gruff caretaker? Its do-it-all busybody who, in Jud’s words, knows where all the bodies are buried? Or might it be another member of Wicks’ flock? The longsuffering lawyer? The bestselling author? The alcoholic doctor? The fledgling influencer or the ailing cellist, perhaps?
The case seems short on clues but long on suspects. Benoit Blanc will do his best to size up both.
From Sherlock Holmes to Miss Marple to Benoit Blanc, fictional detectives have always chased two things: truth and justice. They seek to bring order out of chaos, peace (or, at least, resolution) to a time of violence. In the Knives Out films, Blanc seems especially dogged in his pursuit of both: This is no mere hobby, no 9-to-5 job. He’s driven to catch the killer (or killers), and he’ll do whatever it takes to complete his mission.
Father Jud’s mission is much different. He’s there to care for people—and he takes that job just as seriously as Blanc takes his. He wants to help people, body and soul. And he does a better job of that than you might think.
We also hear that Monsignor Wicks has made a positive impact on at least some of his parishioners, too. The groundskeeper, Samson Holt, was an alcoholic before he came into the church’s orbit. With Wicks’ help, and the help of church lady Martha Delacroix, he sobered up. Samson especially credits Martha with his sobriety. “She gives me the strength every day to not go back to the bottle,” he says, and he calls her “my angel on earth.”
That “angel” quip above begins the movie’s Leviticus-long scroll of spiritual content.
The movie’s very name, Wake Up Dead Man, may be a reference to many Scriptures that refer to bodily or spiritual resurrection. “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead,” we read in Ephesians 5:14. And in the context of the film, a resurrection of both body and spirit might be in play.
On the day Wicks dies, he curiously tells his Catholic congregation that he, Monsignor Wicks, will rise from the grave. After his violent passing, one congregant believes that he’ll do just that. And certainly, something strange takes place soon thereafter.
But the film is also referencing a hoped-for revival within the congregation itself.
Wicks’ parish is small and shrinking. And Wicks tends to revel in its contraction, lambasting any visitor who might walk through their doors with condemnation of that person’s real or imagined sins. We’re told that he’s always aiming for at least one walkout, and we see several people storm from the congregation: a mother and her son (after Wicks says some pretty awful things about single mothers and children born out of wedlock), an apparently gay couple and others whose sins may not be so obvious from our vantage point.
Wicks’ outbursts trigger two reactions from his loyal core constituents: one, fear of Wicks’ wrath; and two, a smug sense of superiority. Those outbursts, it’s suggested, keep Wicks’ flock in line; and one churchgoer is sure that he can weaponize Wicks’ sermons and turn him into a powerful YouTube and social media presence.
Father Jud presents a different school of thought. A former boxer who killed a man in the ring, Jud was saved by Christ and found a new way forward. He makes a number of surprisingly poignant statements about the nature of Christ and the power of love. And in one of the film’s most moving sequences, he sets aside a critical moment in Blanc’s investigation—an investigation which could theoretically prove his innocence—in order to spend time with a grieving woman, offering solace and spiritual help.
The film pits Wicks and Jud against each other—with Wicks insisting that Christians need to fight to reclaim the ground they’ve lost, and Jud arguing that the only way forward is through radical, Christlike love. “Christ came to heal the world, not fight it,” he says.
Blanc comes into this world as a spiritual outsider. He tells Jud that he’s a “proud heretic” who worships at “the altar of rational thought.” He claims that God is a “fiction,” and sometimes, a hint of atheistic anger slips into his soliloquies. But late in the film, Blanc claims to have a “road to Damascus” experience that influences how he handles the conclusion of the case.
The congregants have their own viewpoints about what faith means and how it manifests. Lawyer Vera Draven has dutifully funneled tithes and offerings to the church—to the point where she’s basically keeping the thing afloat. (She expresses hope that her deceased father sees her good works and smiles down from heaven.) Cellist Simone Vivane suffers from chronic pain, but Wicks has promised her a miracle. Martha has served the church for literally generations. She grew up under the religious tutelage of Rev. Prentice Wicks (the current Monsignor’s grandfather) and is a strict, sometimes judgmental adherent. Meanwhile, author Lee Ross may be more a follower of Wicks than God.
As you might imagine, Wake Up Dead Man is filled with the language and trappings of Christianity. The physical church is filled with stained glass and statues—though, tellingly, the sanctuary lacks a crucifix. (The wall is stained where one once hung.) In flashback, someone desecrates the interior—breaking statues, ripping apart holy books and ultimately tearing down the cross itself. Priests take confessions and perform last rites. A local bar has taken on a hell-like theme for itself: Painted flames adorn its windows and much of its décor is studded with images of demons and devils (including a horned Elvis). A fancy glass case holds a tiny statue of Jesus. Someone quips that a character is a “few beads short of a rosary.” Martha believes that someone was “struck down by God.”
Wicks and Jud take each other’s confessions, and Wicks’ own litany of sins focuses on instances of masturbation. He goes into detail on the how, where, why and how often. Later, Jud learns that these confessions were outright lies, told simply to make Jud uncomfortable. (Wicks was apparently physically incapable of the act.)
We see obscene images scrawled across the tomb of Rev. Prentice Wicks (the Monsignor’s grandfather) in graffiti. In flashback, we see the reverend and his daughter (the Monsignor’s mother)—a woman, we’re told, of questionable morality. Her wardrobe displays some cleavage and leg, and in one scene, she wears a bikini. She apparently gets pregnant out of wedlock, and in the present day, she’s sometimes called a “hussy” or “whore.”
Jud watches Martha and Wicks exit a confessional, both looking disheveled and breathless. We’re led to believe that they were engaged in sexual activity (but later learn it was a confession after all). Samson playfully smacks Martha on the rear.
We learn that a supposedly celibate priest fathered a child.
As mentioned, Wicks is found with a knife in his back. (We see both real and theoretical replays of the stabbing.) Characters die by poison. One is stabbed in the neck and found dead. Corpses, partially or fully skeletonized, are found in a vat of acid. A child is repeatedly struck. Someone keels over, dead.
A book is thrown at someone. In flashback, we see Father Jud punch a fellow priest in the face. We also hear that he killed someone in a boxing ring. A decayed corpse lays in a crypt. Someone’s slugged in the face.
Two f-words and more than 20 s-words—many of which are uttered by priests. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “d–n,” “h—,” “d–k” and “p-ss.”
Vera, the attorney, returns to smoking after a 15-year hiatus. A handful of characters have (or have had) drinking problems: One has been sober for years. Another drinks heavily, and we see him clearly intoxicated a time or two. Still another takes a swig from a flask during Mass. We see people with glasses of beer and whiskey at a bar.
Obviously, lying and subterfuge are an inherent part of the plot here, with a character (or characters) literally trying to get away with murder.
A fledgling politician laments how he failed to garner a following—no matter how many divisive “cards” he played (including those related to race, gender and sexual preference).
When Benoit Blanc first walks into Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, he makes no secret to Father Jud about his lack of faith. He looks at the sanctuary and feels it’s a religious Disneyland—from the splashy neogothic architecture on down. “The rites, rituals, the costumes, all of it,” he says. They smack of fairy tales. They’re just stories.
Father Jud says that, yes, all those religious trappings are, in a way, stories. But he gently challenges Blanc’s assumptions that these are stories without purpose. Maybe, Jud says, these stories are just trying to get to a beautiful, core truth. And as he speaks, sunlight begins to stream through a window, shining heaven-borne light into the church’s dark, gray interior.
We could talk a lot more about the religious tensions in this movie: between Jud and Blanc, between Jud and Wicks, between Jud and many of his parishioners. We could try to psychoanalyze director Rian Johnson, who was (according to Word and Way) “very deeply, personally Christian” before he walked away from the faith. We could see a scathing critique of a certain stripe of Christianity and a strong attaboy of another.
Just stories? The Blanc side of Johnson would say so. But the movie suggests they can be beautiful stories, sometimes life-changing stories. And in Father Jud, we get an inkling that even now, Johnson hopes that they just might be true.
As for this story—the story of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery—it comes with some chapters we wish we could skip.
Obviously, few people would watch a murder mystery without the expectation of, y’know, murder. It is an inescapable and expected part of the story. But some of the sexual elements could’ve easily been avoided, as could the ratings-pushing profanity we hear. And let’s not ignore the fact that some conservative Christians might feel like Johnson’s finger is pointed at them—never mind that those same conservative Christians would actually embrace much of what Father Jud says, too.
But for those who enjoy a good mystery with a dynamite cast, Wake Up Dead Man is a first-rate whodunit, growing more satisfying with each outlandish twist. It wrestles with questions of faith honestly. It examines the Church critically, but with compassion. The movie’s faith-based musings offer their own rewards—and challenges.
This film comes with content concerns aplenty, and it sure isn’t for kids. But for adults who can navigate its more problematic elements, Wake Up Dead Man is more than a fun mystery: It’s a conversation starter worthy of a cup of coffee and a piece of pie.
For more thoughts on the morality of the murder mystery, check out Paul Asay’s guest column in The Christian Post.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
