• Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man is a Netflix whodunnit centered on a fatal stabbing during a church service.
• Josh O’Connor plays Father Jud, a young priest who becomes the prime suspect while trying to restore moral order.
• The film mixes classic locked-room detective beats with sharp political satire and Benoit Blanc’s investigation.
• Justin Chang praises O’Connor’s performance but finds some supporting characters underwritten.
H2: Rian Johnson returns to a classic murder puzzle
Rian Johnson brings Benoit Blanc back to Netflix in Wake Up Dead Man, a murder mystery set inside a morally fractured Catholic parish. The film opens with Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), an incendiary cleric whose sermons divide his congregation, and ends with his shocking death during a Good Friday homily. Daniel Craig’s Blanc arrives to untangle how a killer could strike inside a locked, crowded church.
H3: A priest at the center of suspicion
Josh O’Connor stars as Father Jud Duplenticy, a “young, dumb, and full of Christ” junior priest sent to mend a church beset by cruelty and intolerance. Jud’s compassionate approach and complicated past make him both an earnest counterpoint to Wicks’s demagoguery and an obvious suspect when the monsignor is stabbed. Justin Chang’s review highlights O’Connor’s warm, vulnerable performance as the emotional heart of the film.
H3: Locked-room heritage and literary nods
Johnson wears his influences on his sleeve. Wake Up Dead Man explicitly references John Dickson Carr’s famed locked-room lectures, and the film leans into clever, puzzle-box plotting. Blanc even quotes Carr’s ideas while parsing an apparently impossible crime — a wink to classic Golden Age detective fiction that will please genre fans.
H2: Politics, faith, and satire
The movie directs its ire at the intersection of conservative politics and religious power, portraying Wicks as a cultish figure who weaponizes faith. Johnson’s satire aims widely — from social-media opportunists to rightward-drifting intellectuals — and the film often favors broad caricature over granular character study. Chang notes this imbalance: while Jud feels deeply sketched, many parishioners stay largely decorative.
H3: Cast and tone
Alongside Craig, O’Connor, and Brolin, the ensemble includes Glenn Close, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Jeremy Renner, Cailee Spaeny, and Daryl McCormack. The movie moves between suspense, dark comedy, and moments of genuine spiritual reflection, culminating in an action-heavy finale that jungles gore, rain, and mystery.
H2: Verdict — a thoughtful crowd-pleaser with flaws
Wake Up Dead Man succeeds when it treats faith and doubt with seriousness and curiosity, and when O’Connor’s Jud grounds the story in humility and grace. Its satire and locked-room ingenuity make for an entertaining puzzle, but the thinly drawn supporting roles undercut suspense at times. For viewers who love classic detective mechanics threaded with topical bite, Rian Johnson’s latest offers a provocative, sometimes messy ride on Netflix.
Image Referance: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-current-cinema/wake-up-dead-man-a-murder-mystery-with-god-in-the-details