Wake Up Dead Man | Failing to understand the Power of Faith

Given my own personal Catholic background, and nitpick with Rian Johnson's films post The Last Jedi overall, I should very likely dispise this as it accurately follows more than exactly what I came to expect from Johnson's previous Knives Outs films, or rather, ever since he dropped being an interesting filmmaker on the rise to then let the fan reaction over his loved-hated Star Wars sequel chapter went over his head so much – even if he'll never admit to it – and turned this trilogy on the verge to become a mainstream whodunit franchise into his own personal author's stage to unleash all his spite, hatred and anger against MAGA, alt right, and as Glass Onion showed, Elon Musk. As its very likely from where Johnson - and half of Hollywood; draws to think that's where all the criticisms against their work comes from: Trump voters.

And if expectations were to based on how Glass Onion turned out – and its defenders turning a blind eye – it was all ought to quickly sturn stale boring pseudo partisan propaganda no different than any faux diversity/virtue-signaling mainstream product any studio poop out on their rotten moral compass; whom Johnson slowly has turned into the living moving caricatured spokesperson of left-progressist Hollywood and his Knives Out movies a dictionary pile of by now predictable easy satire poking fun targets to dress as critically intellectual edge, going over the same repeated to death virtue signaling talking points against Republican, Trump, MAGA, alt right, you name it.

Wake Up Dead Man is no different from none of that, coming up with another intricate murder mystery to nearly serve just as an excuse to redirect its threaded theme towards a specific target of scrutiny while gathering a main ensemble formed of A listers, hot new comers, old legends and filling them around the exact same roles of a bunch of narcissistic petty jerks - while the men are all dumb, gullible, manipulative or losers with irredeemable motivations; and the ladies, while flawed, have their errors justifiable and quickly deserving of empathy because they are all clearly victims of circumstances or wrongful upbringing – the pattern remains unmistakably unbroken and the tactics Johnson employs to structure the investigative dynamic of the plot unfold through expected beats and turns, while others not so much.

But... with a golden hue, however, going up in its favour, in the shape of Josh O'Connor! Delivering a movie star in the making presence that glues your attention near instantly, not just with naturally built powerhouse charisma and sweet charm but incredible warmth that's aided by an absolutely loveable and nicely layered character found in Father Jud, a good-hearted priest who's also a snarky goofball and a guilt-ridden tormented soul but with complete unshakable faith! The heart and soul as well as the easy highlight of the movie – dare I say of the trilogy; favorably WAY MORE interesting than the main heroine ladies from the previous two, selling a nice change of pace tagging along with Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc whom remains fun as ever.

Provided also by how the focus of the narrative given to Father Jud makes this the most focused and streamlined to its pulpy origins from the three films with a pretty good central mystery that captures that warm cozy curiosity feeling of a stormy cloud night where you are tucked under the sheets and can't go to sleep until the story finally comes to an end and its ominous dark secret is revealed. And quite a lot like some of the best Christie novels the premise is primarily focused on from the perspective of what a tertiary character while our main southern gay Hercule Poirot type detective parachutes in out of nowhere in the middle of the story and it only picks up more steam from there on, having the character-centered focus and the detective-esq procedural tag along nicely.

Perhaps sacrificing the prominence of the ensemble cast, which was more consistent in past films, but the equally strong prominence of a central focus doesn't hurt at all, and everyone in the cast still has space to showcase memorable presences,with some obvious standouts – Glenn Close and Josh Brolin in particular, and Jeremy Renner and Thomas Haden Church stealing the spotlight with minimal screen time or lines of dialogue.

The set up is solid in puzzlingly cryptic mystery that gets more and more confusing and gnarly as new layers get uncovered, with the structure this time really feeling like something out of Agatha Christie without the cheap pseudo-reinvention of the previous two. Where you are actually tagging along in the crime-solving investigation of the clue gathering and suspects disssection instead of just witnessing the repercussions of consequences from the murder influencing the ensemble like the other previous heavily focused on, to then throw in all its bitter Twitter checklist of topics to make fun off and dress its liberal-preaching as intelectualized satire, leaving the mystery solving falling almost like an background afterthought that only comes out to play at the beggining stablishment and the big climatic reveal, eveg if some the twists and ridicule turns gets on Scooby-dooby-doo version of gothic terror.

The thing I will poke my finger on however, it is also its most fragile aspect that can so easily dismantle like a house of cards, is when this is somewhat also trying to be a faith-based "drama" or at least a faith-centered procedural thriller somewhere in between Father Brown and Hitchcock's I Confess - though not as fun as the former nor as deeper as the latter in its way too moderny self-aware irony and Netflix big budget glitz. With the issue not being exactly on touching on the themes of religious belief or communal faith with any sense of depth as much as I can see that it tries and it legit tries to go for the earnest part of it all in key scenes people have already mentioned to death in what's unquestionably the closest these films ever came close to have a soft sentimental side.

The problem being in how it's deliberately trying to discuss religion, especially Catholicism, directly for non believers and written by non-believers. As the way it treats Blanc's atheism and his mocking and critical disdain towards it like the correct intellectual assertion about how to view and deal with Catholicism as a fairy tale infested with ignorant prejudices. In other words: the typical vision of a liberal atheists that "serve on the altar of logic and rational" that's trying to educate you on how a proper Christian should act and behave. Sorry if my eyes rolling backwards into my skull can't cope with the elephant trunk size smug hypocrisy of this sort of thinking. Because it's just exactly the ever same way to pretend humanism by irrational material logic that dismisses faith and the possibility of the divine as a pretty tall tale meant to inspire others and little of nothing else.

The same way it tries to approach it by liberal-friendly goggles, that tries to insert compassion where it sees there's far too much "judgement". Is that to say that father's Jud pacifism is weak Christianity? No - this is not the same passive idealistic (and sacrilegeous) fantasy of films like Conclave in that matter; as he's still holding Church's precepts as his moral guideline, but at the same time is quick to draw anything countering his position as extremism or deem as hateful thinking. Trying to imput this pragmatist view of religion à la Émile Durkheim seeing its positive side as a role of comfort - and nothing else besides it, while dismissing or neglecting its role of salvation because, like Blanc, it doesn’t understand it, nor cares to.

In the same movie that depicts Catholicism with the homilies sounding more like Protestant sermons, and attempts to demonstrate the traditionalist hatred of modernity, by sticking to every contemporary and inherently modernist calling card of intelectual thinking. Consistency is a thing only kept to the mystery solving instead of its moral logic that's just the same Hollywood presumptuous smug one-sided bubble discourse that just feels backwards by each assertion that it tries to make sound like a universal idea based on its own closeted/limited logic that's filled of prejudices of its own. Preaching about affording a slice of grace towards another – except if you're a straight white male that is. 

Remaining as the typical congenital result of the still prevailing post-2016 witch hunt for everything considered conservative that's its just boring. Boring that it sticks to those caricatured archetypes, and treats faith as inspiring fairy-tale rather than a big deeper mystery yet to unsolve. But... as a nice genre piece, its fun and easily the best out of the three for me just for the reason it just might be the less obnoxiously self-centered about itself. 

So... more and less how I initially felt about the original: fun until the obnoxiously false-pretense of intelect to hide dumb genre-deconstruction by that last reveal to ruin it all, which this avoids to fall in bad taste because it THANK GOD doesn't recycle the same kind od twist TWICE like previous two did and actually settles for its own thing, both thematically and dramatically – and again Father Jud is just great, consider me now a Josh O'Connor fan! I'll miss him in the next film where Benoit Blanc will be busy defending another oppressed lesbian while uncovering the conspiracy behind a stand-in for the Jeffrey Epstein papers.... I reckon it'll hardly be better than this one!