Wake Up Dead Man (Movie Review)

Today I finally watched Wake Up Dead Man, the new Knives Out movie. I wanted to go see something in theaters but realized the times didn’t work, so I decided I should finally go watch this instead.

I loved the first Knives Out, and I will confess that I’ve only seen part of Glass Onion (I was watching it with my family late in the evening, and it was longer than we realized so we DNFed temporarily and then I never actually finished it. I loved the first one a LOT, and the second one had potential but didn’t immediately grab me as much as #1 did. I quite enjoyed this third one though.

I always find nuanced takes on religion in media to be fascinating. I grew up with a Catholic mother and a Jewish father, and was raised celebrating holidays from both religions and going to both church and synagogue on holy days, so I’ve always known that there are many valid perspectives on religion as a concept and also specifically.

I won’t get in to my specific beliefs, but I always find it interesting to see how people represent religion, especially Christianity. It’s kind of easy to go one way or the other: to have the whole thing be a missionary statement to “let yourself be saved by the lord”, or to represent religious Christians as the oppressors that they, to be fair, often were and are and call them delusional. I liked that this film gave sensical perspectives from both religious and non-religious characters, and explored the use of religion to attack and oppress versus to accept and love. I like that that character was the “good” character of this Knives Out film, and even though I had the ending spoiled before I saw it, I still enjoyed watching the journey and rooting for Josh O’Connor’s character.

I do agree with what I’ve heard from others about it being slightly less of an ensemble piece than the prior two films and focusing more on Benoit Blanc and Father Jud specifically, but their performances were great so I wasn’t too bothered by that. Overall, I gave it 4/5 stars and would recommend it, especially to those who like murder mysteries.

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Thanks for reading!

Holly