Rian Johnson’s ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ Screens — Josh O’Connor Steals the Show in Most Ambitious Entry Yet [TIFF]

Rian Johnson’s “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” is a slick contraption, another clockwork whodunit that, mostly, clicks as it should. Did I mention it’s 144 minutes?

“Knives Out” (2019) felt like a reimagining of the genre. “Glass Onion” nearly equaled it, adding a more meta approach. Now, with “Wake Up Dead Man,” Johnson’s built the most ambitious (but weakest) of the three—a still entertaining, and for the most part, engrossing puzzle box that only falls apart in its last stretch.

Positive reviews are coming in from Variety, BBC, TheWrap, Deadline, IndieWire (B+), The Daily Beast, The Playlist (A-/B+), Vulture. The more mixed takes come to us from The Film Stage, ScreenRant (6/10), and THR. The result is 82 on Metacritic.

Should I even spell out the plot, when one of the supposed main characters is dead within the first twenty minutes? Probably not. So, just the bare bones.

Set in a Gothic church in upstate New York, with Johnson clearly relishing his riff on the subgenre—Agatha Christie and her imitators—Josh O’Connor, playing an ex-boxer turned assistant pastor, is the closest thing to a soul in this picture. He’s charming, open, and bruised, which makes you wish the movie belonged to him. Then there’s Josh Brolin as the tyrannical monsignor, and Glenn Close skulking around and looking miserable in every frame. Cailee Spaeny, Kerry Washington, and Daryl McCormack are given almost nothing. It’s a shame, because part of the pleasure of these films has always been watching the ensemble spark to life.

And where’s Benoit Blanc? That’s the real mystery. Johnson hides him away for the first half hour, and when Daniel Craig finally shows up, the film hits its stride. One imagines Craig wanted to pull back after the excesses of “Glass Onion,” but the series always needs his flamboyance. Pairing him with Mila Kunis, here as the town police chief, in some scenes, results in odd chemistry.

However, this is O’Connor’s movie—Father Jud’s story, not Blanc’s. By the time Benoit finally appears, nearly a third of the way in, O’Connor has already taken hold of it. With his crooked grin and curly-haired charm, he plays Jud, a young priest sent to Wicks’ parish after knocking out a deacon. A former boxer who once killed a man in the ring, Jud’s priesthood feels less like a calling than a lifelong act of penance. O’Connor makes that contradiction believable. He gives us both the devout believer and the boyish skeptic, grinning at himself even as he gives himself over to the role. It’s a wonderful performance.

There’s also a sharper political edge this time: Brolin’s fire-breathing Monsignor preaches fear and anger, an unsubtle stand-in for strongman leaders who coopt religion to consolidate power. Johnson hammers the point too hard, and it’s obvious who he’s making parallels to.

Still, audiences will walk away satisfied. That’s Johnson’s real sleight of hand: he won’t dazzle you, but offering just enough surprise, just enough style, and just enough confidence in his plotting to make you overlook how convoluted it turns out to be. I was hooked for most of the ride, genuinely invested in Blanc cracking the case. The trouble comes in the final stretch, where Johnson tries to tie up every loose end. The last 20 minutes are almost entirely swallowed by explanatory flashbacks, spelling out what really happened.

‘Wake Up Dead Man’ isn’t the film to prove Johnson’s genius, though the series does keep shifting its style and tone with each instalment. Still, maybe it’s time for him to move on. For the past seven years, these Knives Out mysteries have been his entire output. His next project, an original sci-fi, suggests he’s ready to leave Benoit Blanc behind—and maybe that’s for the best.