An American Film (Maker/Writer/Critic) Attends the BFI London Film Festival and Reviews…Wake Up Dead Man

By Keaton Wilder Marcus

Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion challenged itself to introduce its entire cast of characters in the first 20 minutes of the film’s running time - and doing so with the Covid restrictions it was filmed under was no simple task. The second installment to his series begins with the characters attempting to solve a puzzle box designed by the movie’s billionaire antagonist: Miles Bron (Edward Norton). We are introduced to Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc as he plays Among Us - before he receives a formal invitation from Bron instead of a puzzle box. Regardless, the audience deduces within the very first sequence that Blanc is attending this retreat to Bron’s compound and that the film’s antagonist needs our detective present in order for the murder mystery to be satisfied. In other words, when the characters solve the puzzle box, they solve the movie for the audience.

The third installment to his series, Wake Up Dead Man, is a rebellious re-invention of Johnson’s own murder mystery formula in the sense that it knows large movies can start small; or even without the reason that most audience members are buying tickets or pressing play: Craig’s Blanc. If Glass Onion began with a stylized montage that made the movie more obvious than it should have, Wake Up Dead Man commences with the only thing it knows it needs: a boxer-turned-priest named Reverend Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor). Jud is called in front of his colleagues - led by Bp. Langstrom (Jeffrey Wright) - because he punched a fellow priest in the face. He is commissioned to work for Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) - a Monsignor whose first meeting with Jud is a confession about his crippling masturbation addiction. The mystery commences not long after within Wicks’ church in the village of Chimney Rock.

Benoit Blanc doesn’t appear on-screen for more than 30 minutes - and when he did, I wanted to disrupt the over-emphasized decorum in a room full of London Film Festival press and shout Craig’s name to the moon. May we not have a moment of applause for this iconic character as critics? It proved to be a painstaking task to choose a character I was more attached to between Blanc and Jud - and that debate tends to be a rarity for the third movie in a franchise. But in any case, Wake Up Dead Man truly has one storyteller, and that is Josh O’Connor’s Jud - who narrates the various escapades his character falls into during the first act. Wake Up Dead Man features many tightly-wound tales within its 140 minutes - and that is because Johnson’s screenplay is one of a skilled craftsman. Johnson, as one may guess from the premise, uses the clever double meaning of a confession in religion and a confession in murder. He utilizes this simple concept effectively in a mystery written so unpredictably that by the film’s second act turn, you are baffled that Wake Up Dead Man has something this substantial up its sleeves after 90 minutes of clever gags.

This is a Netflix original. Wake Up Dead Man will have a two-week run in theaters before it streams on the platform by December 12th. I would like to say that I deeply appreciate the fact that I was not only able to see this movie early without cost - but also support Johnson’s vision in a theater. Frankly, this film’s largest audience will be an audience that is tuning in from their phones and laptops and televisions; and although it is thrilling that this original movie franchise had its rights bought for 400 million dollars by Netflix - I also know that this is an experience best enjoyed in a packed house full of people who are overjoyed by the mere presence of a character like Blanc; who giggle at the unsubtle jabs that many filmmakers are delightfully making towards characters not unlike the administration that is currently dismantling what makes the United States the country it should be. In a manner translatable to the language of cinema that audience members universally speak, Johnson continues to carve his lane as a filmmaker whose voice becomes increasingly compelling to watch.

Wake Up Dead Man is a movie full of the filmmaking prowess that I have come to expect from a Rian Johnson production but am even more delighted to see in a Netflix production. The dolly zoom (put my head on a pike if I got this wrong, Mr. Johnson) in the aforementioned second act turn exemplifies the visual trickery that this movie immerses its audience into. In other words, this is a movie that asks you to look in the background of the frame when you feel like you should be examining the foreground. It is a movie that has people throwing fingers at the screen as if they can communicate with the characters. Wake Up Dead Man is a movie that knows the visual and emotional arc of what comedy should be; Josh O’Connor riding a bike home after drinking too much - if you know, you know. There is a particular scene with a supporting character named Louise (Bridget Everett) that begins on a note of mockery and ends on one of a sincerity which not only re-affirmed my love for Jud - but gave me an appreciation for the tonal attention-to-detail so rare in a big-budget movie such as this.

Rian Johnson’s confidence is what won me over in the end. He is a director keenly aware that his own series does not need its most iconic character to sell its legitimacy anymore. This directorial swagger rears its head in various ways throughout the film; whether that be the aforementioned first 30 minutes that don’t feel like a Knives Out installment but rather a movie more expansive than the franchise’s formula; or the deft use of homage that Johnson pays to the works of Christie - in a manner which allows literature and film from separate centuries to communicate with each other in a deeply engaging way.

Wake Up Dead Man, with its running time, is a movie that risks over-explaining itself with various expositional plot twists. When the credits rolled, the joy I felt as an aspiring director was more than the film’s occasional heavy-handedness could match. Johnson is curating his own mythos around characters that are coming from his brain and his brain only - and that was inspiring enough to earn a clap from me when his name showed up on-screen.