Wake Up Dead Man

 

Rian Johnson: Wake Up Dead Man (US 2025).

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.

    US 2025. Netflix. PC: T-Street Productions ; Ram Bergman Productions. P: Ram Bergman, Rian Johnson.

    D+SC: Rian Johnson. Cin: Steve Yedlin – colour – 1,85:1 – 4K master format – Super 35 some shots – released on DCP and UHD video. Aerial DP: Jeremy Braben. PD: Rick Heinrichs. AD: Dean Clegg. Set dec: Kathryn Pyle. Cost: Jenny Eagan. Makeup: John Blake. SFX: Sarah Pearce. VFX: Scanline VFX ; PFX ; Digikore VFX ; Rows of Numbers. Lidar services: We Shoot Lasers. VFX supervisor: Giles Harding. End credit paintings of main characters in costume: Isabella Watling. M: Nathan Johnson. S: Matthew Wood - Dolby Digital * Dolby Atmos. ED: Bob Ducsay.

    Soundtrack: G. F. Händel: "Thine Be the Glory". Tom Waits: "Come On Up to the House" (Tom Waits, Kathleen Brennan).

    CAST from Wikipedia:

Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc, a private detective

Josh O'Connor as Jud Duplenticy, a young priest and former boxer who reformed after killing a man in a match

Glenn Close as Martha Delacroix, a devout church lady and Wicks' right-hand woman

Josh Brolin as Monsignor Jefferson Wicks, a charismatic and domineering priest who serves as the congregation's central figure

Mila Kunis as Geraldine Scott, a local police chief

Jeremy Renner as Dr. Nat Sharp, a town doctor

Kerry Washington as Vera Draven, Esq., a tightly wound lawyer

Andrew Scott as Lee Ross, a formerly best-selling author fallen on hard times

Cailee Spaeny as Simone Vivane, a disabled former concert cellist

Daryl McCormack as Cy Draven, Vera's adoptive son, an aspiring politician

Thomas Haden Church as Samson Holt, a circumspect groundskeeper and Martha's lover

Jeffrey Wright as Langstrom, a bishop who assigns Duplenticy to Wicks' church

Annie Hamilton as Grace Wicks, Jefferson's mother, branded the "harlot whore" by Jefferson and the community

James Faulkner as Reverend Prentice Wicks, Jefferson's grandfather

Bridget Everett as Louise, a construction company employee

Noah Segan as Nikolai, a bar owner

Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a baseball announcer

    Loc: Holy Innocents Church (High Beech, Epping Forest, Essex, England, UK). – Butler's Retreat (Epping Forest). – Cold Spring (New York, USA).

    Filming dates 10 June – 17 Aug 2024.

    Festival premiere: 6 Sep 2025 Toronto.

    US theatrical premiere: 26 Nov 2025, released by Netflix

    Finnish theatrical premiere: none.

    Netflix: 12 Dec 2025.

    Viewed at home on Netflix with Finnish subtitles, 24 Dec 2025.

The title has two sources: the traditional American prison song "Ain't No More Cane on the Brazos" and "Wake Up Dead Man" (the final track on the U2 album Pop, 1997).

AA: Rian Johnson's Wake Up Dead Man would deserve to be seen on the largest cinema screen, but in Finland there is not even a token cinema release. For the first time I view a film on Netflix. The experience is cheapened by a forced cut: having barely started, the end credits are interrupted. End credits are essential especially in a huge production like this where the roll of honour is a true celebration to the art and craft on display. One can sense love and commitment to every detail. Fittingly for the subject. God is in the detail.

I loved Knives Out (US 2019), the first movie in the series starring Daniel Craig as the private detective Benoit Blanc. I missed the second movie, Glass Onion (US 2022) because it was not theatrically released in my country.

Wake Up Dead Man is a lavish spectacle boasting a magnificent cast of characters, expanding and elaborating a classic Agatha Christie mystery formula of in which everyone has a motive for murder.

As shot by Steve Yedlin, this movie shares with the first Knives Out movie a grandiose sense of space, in this case a sacred one. The vision is impressive both in awesome aerial shots and fascinating and haunting details. These films are feasts to the eye. The distinction of Wake Up Dead Man is a Gothic approach.

It is an excellent piece of entertainment and more. The members of the parish of the charismatic Monsignor (Josh Brolin) are lost souls who find solace in his compelling circle of faith. The actors convey the solitude and anguish of their characters with sensitivity and passion. I do not find a weak link in the cast. Josh O'Connor excels as the counterforce to the authoritarian Monsignor, but I would like to sing the praise of all in the cast.

The power of the faith is so overwhelming that key questions remain ignored. External motions of religion are followed, but have they anything to do with Jesus Christ? Love thy neighbour as yourself and God above all: this is the Law and the Prophets. But there is no love in this building.

"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves".

The Knives Out series obeys the classic concept of storytelling of plot and story (sujet and fabula). The plot is about the detective's search to find out who's guilty, and the story is about understanding the bigger history, the revelation of what it is all about. When we reach the end we also comprehend the beginning. It is a narrative practice open to endless variations and developments.

Again we also have a locked room mystery, and there is a witty meta-narrative about the police and the detective independently studying a classic of the genre, John Dickson Carr (also known as Carter Dickson), and especially his novel The Hollow Man (The Three Coffins in the USA). I am also a fan, and in the 1960s I read all his novels that had been translated into Finnish. But The Hollow Man I never read; it was published in Finland only in 1981 as Kolme ruumisarkkua.

The dialogue is juicy and witty, and one can guess that the cast has been enjoying the great ensemble work. 

There is something terribly wrong in the very state of the social contract. Wake Up Dead Man displays an awareness of the volatile condition of society, a quiet desperation, the lure of authoritarianism, the danger of the internet - but also an innate goodness, courage and dignity, facing one's weaknesses and failures and feeling that lure of desperation but never succumbing to it.

John Dickson Carr: The Hollow Man (1936), in Finnish Kolme ruumisarkkua (1981).