Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

Just like fruit, the longer franchises persist, the greater chance they have of spoiling. The returns on the once beloved John Wick diminished of late, and it looks like the same ghost is coming for Knives Out. The most frustrating part is just how close Rian Johnson was to pulling off a complete heist of a third entry in Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. 

The first Knives Out became a sensation because of its ability to have its cake and eat it too. It was both the most mystery to ever mystery while also subverting the genre almost entirely. Now a proper IP of its own, the series has created its own tropes in need of subverting or risks a return to mediocrity: the grand unraveling speeches at the conclusion, fishbowl locations with little meaning beyond their function, the hyper-timely characterizations of the suspects, and even Benoit Blanc’s insufferability. Wake Up Dead Man pushes its own form past these now predictable trappings and genuinely does its best to not allow the brand demise to genre irrelevance. 

The location and its context matter more than ever. Rev. Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor), a young parish priest with a tempered past but a good heart, is sent to a micro parish in the fictional Chimney Rock, New York called Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude as a symbolic punishment for taking divine justice into his own hands (he punched a dick of a deacon). It’s only really a punishment because the charismatic and cultish Msgr. Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) is gleefully diminishing numbers with his fiery culture war homilies, creating a smaller and more loyal core congregation. 

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