Movie Review: Wake Up Dead Man (2025)

Wake Up Dead Man (2025) written and directed by Rian Johnson

Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is called into the remote town in upstate New York. The pastor, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), has been killed during Good Friday Mass, seemingly in an impossible way. He was in a side room off the church sanctuary and was stabbed in the back with a demon-headed knife. But no one was in the room, which has three cement walls. Suspicion falls on the new associate pastor, Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor), whose pastoral style is a sharp contrast to Wicks. Wicks likes to preach Hell and brimstone, mostly to send new parishioners away in disgust. He has a core set of followers who stay at the parish despite his acerbic style. Nine months earlier, Fr. Jud's arrival is an opportunity to shake things up but he makes no progress, in spite of his clearly authentic desire to heal wounds and divisions rather than create them. Fr. Jud knows he's innocent and initially cooperates with Blanc's investigation, despite Blanc's irrational disregard and disdain of religion. Blanc is only interested in solving the unsolvable mystery of the crime. A lot of skeletons come out of a lot of closets as the investigation proceeds.

Solving the mystery involves a lot of red herrings and some implausible moments, but is overall satisfactory. It's certainly not the ridiculous plot of the previous film. Johnson still has some ideological axe-grinding in this film but it's kept to a minimum and is balanced by other elements. Wicks is about as Christian as the warden in Shawshank Redemption, which is to say only on the surface. He's a selfish and manipulative man, something his parishioners come to realize in a key scene, thus making them likely suspects. By contrast, Father Jud is a broken man trying to find redemption through the priesthood by ministering to others in their need. He still lapses back into fighting but wants to leave that behind. He's genuinely Catholic, something that Blanc indirectly acknowledges by the end, leading to a very satisfying resolution that is more about redemption than about solving the unsolvable. 

The actors do a great job in their roles. Craig is enjoyable as always. O'Connor does a great job presenting a very complicated character who is the real center of the story. The rest of the cast deliver on their characters, even when some are a bit underwritten even though they become critical to resolving the mystery. 

The movie also has a nice sense of humor. The plot leans heavily on the works of mystery authors like John Dickson Carr (the master of the "locked room" murder) and Agatha Christie, a fact acknowledge in the narrative. It also pokes fun at itself, mentioning that a movie about the situation would turn the characters into superficial versions of themselves on a Netflix version of the story (where the movie is available!). 

Recommended.

As I publish this (December 2025), this is only available streaming on Netflix.