Benoit Blanc goes to church: Mysteries and faith in Wake Up Dead Man

Then the phone call takes an unexpected turn, and the woman on the other end (Bridget Everett) is no longer merely a humorous impediment to a murder investigation, but a human being with her own cares and woes. As the conversation continues, Rev. Jud Duplenticy (an ingenuous John O’Connor) arrives at a moment of clarity regarding what his real priorities are. The Knives Out movies have always existed in a moral universe larger than the mystery du jour, but that universe has never been larger than in Wake Up Dead Man.

Wake Up Dead Man is about an impossible murder, among other impossible mysteries; it is also about the sociopolitical implications of two opposing conceptions of Christianity and of Catholicism in particular.

Blanc’s third adventure is both a welcome departure and a gratifying return to form. On the one hand, where both Knives Out and Glass Onion are set among wealthy, privileged elites whose smug superiority the films delight in skewering, Wake Up Dead Man is Johnson’s version of a cozy small-town mystery, centered on the very ordinary parishioners of an insular Catholic parish in upstate New York. On the other hand, where Glass Onion stands out as a vengeful fantasy about sticking it to the world’s exploitative, incompetent overlords, Wake Up Dead Man, even more than Knives Out, honors compassion and competence in serving others. Knives Out turns on the heroine being a good and caring nurse; that Fr. Jud is a good and caring priest is even more important here.

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