Wake Up Dead Man is less cozy than the previous Knives Out movies, and that’s a good thing

Rian Johnson’s Knives Out movies play great with a crowd. They’re crafted with the kind of attention to visual scheme and clever writing that rewards a big-screen experience. That said, they’re also an easy fit for Netflix’s stubbornly streaming-forward model — not because they look or act like TV movies (though television does have a rich whodunit history, as Johnson himself has tapped into with his Peacock series Poker Face) but because for so many people, murder mysteries are perfect cozy entertainment for a night on the couch. That’s still probably true of Wake Up Dead Man, the third installment in the series starring Daniel Craig as dryly eloquent Southern detective Benoit Blanc. But Johnson also challenges the coziness of his own creation by bringing some horror back into the subject of serial murders.

That claim might initially sound silly: All of these movies, by their nature, feature people getting killed by mysterious assailants and creating paranoia in various groups over who might be next. They don’t have Halloween-level body counts, but they’re not that structurally different from some slashers, particularly the Scream movies, which used a murder-mystery-style approach to reviving the horror subgenre in the late ’90s.

But 2019’s Knives Out, which has apparently become a Thanksgiving-rewatch favorite, has cozy vibes: a neat old mansion! A family reunion! Chris Evans wearing a comfy sweater! (Even if him telling people to “eat shit” isn’t exactly cozy.) 2022’s Glass Onion is even more caustic, but there’s an element of escapism in its island-getaway location, even if that’s ultimately a symbol of grotesque wealth. By comparison, Wake Up Dead Man plays more like a horror movie; Johnson has cited macabre writer Edgar Allan Poe as one of his starting inspirations.

Poe’s gothic suspense stories are not the only horror classics the movie recalls. Wake Up Dead Man has a troubled priest at its center, just like The Exorcist (which receives a visual nod at one point), though Father Jud Duplenticy (Challengers co-star Josh O’Connor) also feels like a character who could have come from 1940s melodrama, right down to his first name. Jud, who serves the same suspect-investigator role as Ana de Armas and Janelle Monáe in the previous films, is a boxer who became a priest, and who has now been transferred to a small church in upstate New York, after being involved in an altercation at his home church.

He’s assigned to assist the singularly unpleasant Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), who preaches a severe and pugnacious vision of Catholic doctrine to a dwindling flock of believers. After a particularly fiery sermon, as Father Jud continues the service, Monsignor Jefferson retires to a small church alcove with a single exit, fully visible to his audience. Somehow, he never emerges alive; he’s murdered under circumstances that should be impossible. It’s Johnson’s version of a locked-room mystery.

Johnson ventures further into Poker Face territory by delaying Benoit Blanc’s entrance for nearly half the movie. In the meantime, he assembles a typical Knives Out oddball ensemble, as usual designed to arouse and express suspicions: a cop (Mila Kunis), a lawyer (Kerry Washington), a doctor (Jeremy Renner), an influencer/failed politician (Daryl McCormack), a devout church attendee (Glenn Close), a groundskeeper (Thomas Haden Church), a musician (Cailee Spaeny), and, in classic Johnson fashion, an aggrieved manosphere type spouting right-wing invective, here a formerly beloved sci-fi author (All of Us Strangers’ Andrew Scott).

While some of these characters are certainly funny, as is the loquacious Blanc when he finally arrives on the scene, the film also has overtones of gothic menace, even anguish. The desolation of the small-town location (and the diminished flock in attendance at services), juxtaposed with Wicks’ grim anger and the prominent mausoleum on church grounds, makes this the most purely atmospheric of the three Knives Out films.

Though the audience isn’t prompted to feel much sympathy for Wicks himself, that’s part of the movie’s darker tone. Whatever relief Jud takes from the death of his unpleasant — and at one point, physically abusive — boss is laced with guilt and shame over the way this death feels like his unconscious wish. (Or perhaps conscious, but secret, as Blanc explores whether Jud might have committed the murder.) As with slasher movies, the audience is invited to share those conflicted feelings. Wicks’ death inspires some relish, both as comeuppance and as intriguing mystery fodder, coupled with a desire to see Blanc restore order by puzzling out the crime.

That’s a typical whodunit story engine. What makes Wake Up Dead Man even more horror-adjacent is the way the filmmakers play up the beautiful yet often forbidding environment of an old Catholic church and accompanying mausoleum. This time, the limited locations feel more desolate and haunted than ever, in spite of the ensemble members milling about. Johnson’s regular cinematographer Steve Yedlin matches that mordant mood with some of his most striking nighttime compositions, including bold uses of red lighting. Johnson fans may recall the blaze of red splashed across the throne-room fight from The Last Jedi, but here it seems intended to evoke blood-soaked giallo movies.

Image: Netflix

Wake Up Dead Man isn’t nearly so gory as one of those Italian horror classics, nor does its story challenge its priest with an Exorcist-like gauntlet of demonology and effluvia. Instead, the movie conjures the uncanny by placing most of its characters in a form of earthly purgatory. Spaeny’s musician, disabled by chronic pain, is hoping for a miracle that will allow her to play cello with her previous energy. Scott’s semi-disgraced author is angling for a manifesto-driven comeback. And the dwindling church community as a whole seems to be on its last legs, hovering between figurative life and death. Even Wicks’ body, interred in the mausoleum rather than the ground, becomes a subject of uneasy mystery later in the film.

The conflict that develops between Jud and Blanc isn’t as simple or direct as a believer set against a logic-adhering skeptic. They’re essentially on the same side, examining death through different lenses. That might sound more analytical than the typical horror movie — and to some extent, it is. Wake Up Dead Man is still a fun, funny puzzle-box picture suffused with Johnson’s cleverness. But the mood of it lingers in a way that Knives Out and Glass Onion didn’t. The solving of those mysteries were satisfying turns of fate, even if they were fueled by our detective hero’s ingenuity. In Wake Up Dead Man, the respite from death and doom — not the triumph over it — feels harder-won.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is currently in theaters (check participating locations here), and coming to Netflix on Dec. 12.