Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is now playing in theaters, ahead of its debut on Netflix later this month. The film, which is Rian Johnson third film starring unconventional detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), already has a lot going for it. A star-studded ensemble cast, a moody setting, and a scathing take on religion and the cult of personality. But like the layers of a (not glass) onion, the central mystery of Wake Up Dead Man is something to behold, culminating in a third act that has a lot going on. So, let’s try to unpack it all.
***Spoilers for Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery below!***
The film brings Benoit Blanc to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, a church in upstate New York run by the increasingly controversial Msgr. Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin). After Wicks appears to be stabbed in an empty storage closet during Good Friday mass, his loyal followers, as well as his assistant Reverend Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor), become suspects.
As Blanc and Jud investigate this “impossible crime”, they learn two important revelations. The first is that Wicks had recently admitted to being the father of church attendee and failed politician Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), and plans to retire and shut down the church after Easter Sunday mass, where he will air out the dirty secrets of his “flock.” The second is that Wicks and Cy plan to finally acquire Wicks’ grandfather’s long-lost fortune, and use it to get into politics.
Things take a turn when Jud appears to witness the movie’s titular act: Wicks exiting the mausoleum he was buried in days earlier, and hugging the church’s groundskeeper, Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church). Jud gets knocked unconscious and wakes up next to Samson’s dead body, believing that he killed him in a fit of rage. Before Jud can turn himself into the authorities, Blanc finds a clue that leads them to the house of flock member Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), where they find both him and Wicks in tubs of acid.
Who is the killer?
The next day, it appears that Blanc is going to unravel the mystery for everyone — and he starts to, laying out how Nat might have independently killed Wicks in order to cover up his malpractice as the town doctor. But suddenly, Blanc appears to have an epiphany that he can’t fully solve the case, which leads to almost everyone leaving the room.
That’s when Blanc unmasks the true killer: devout flock member Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), who has been tied to the church her entire life. She begins to confess everything: Wicks’ grandfather hid his fortune in a jewel that he swallowed just before her death. (The hunt for this jewel also humanizes Wicks’ mother Grace, who we now know was searching for it during her deadly manic episode years ago.) After Jud convinced Martha to confess this secret to Wicks, he hatched a plan to open his grandfather’s tomb, steal it, and run away with Cy.
Martha then decided to stop Wicks by any means necessary, working with Nat to orchestrate the specifics of his murder. She also planned to hide Samson in Wicks’ casket: not only so he could get the jewel from the tomb, but so he could be to be “resurrected” days later, which would help boost the church’s popularity. Nat then killed Samson (and planned to poison Martha with pentobarbital) so he could keep the jewel for himself, and use its fortune to win back his estranged wife. But Martha switched their glasses to ensure that Nat drank the poison, and then staged him and Wicks’ corpse near the vat of acid.
We then learn that Martha has taken the rest of the pentobarbital as penance for her crimes — something that Blanc clocked while addressing the larger group, which led to him faking his “epiphany.” She soon dies, dropping the jewel, and Blanc and Jud both play coy about what to do with it.
A year later, Jud is preparing to open a revamped version of the church, while also dodging legal threats from Cy over the whereabouts of the jewel. In the film’s final moments, we learn that Jud has kept the jewel… and hidden it in the church’s newly-fashioned crucifix.
(featured image: Netflix)
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