The Five Flaws of Wake Up Dead Man

Five reasons why Wake Up Dead Man is the weakest Knives Out mystery.

Rian Johnson returns with another intricate mystery, this time favouring layers over sharpness.

I have become a big fan of Rian Johnson. His writing and directing as a maker of mystery films has certainly allowed me to forgive him for The Last Jedi.

Knives Out was a rare modern mystery, intentionally along the lines of something you’d read in an Agatha Christie novel. Daniel Craig traded in his licence to kill and introduced the world to Benoit Blanc, the immediately engaging southern detective. The murder itself was intricate enough to pull you through the story, but not too convoluted that you couldn’t follow the obligatory detective’s explanation at the climax. These set against the somewhat-tropey bickering family, itself a group of all star talent that held you to the screen and just the right amount of subplot to built a strong ‘theme’ within the story.

Glass Onion was another step up. A brilliant all-star cast, a layered (pun intended) mystery, a playful dig at the pandemic, a clear hint at Blanc’s sexuality which we loved. The mystery was intriguing yet again, another ‘everyone’s a suspect’ set up which was challenging but of course, very solvable for Blanc and for those audience members paying enough attention. The theme was heavier in this one; the rich tech guy and his ‘fanatics’ perfectly filling out the glass onion metaphor.

With these two films and the love of Craig’s enigmatic, dry yet charismatic detective the Knives Out films had all the making of the franchises but for me, Wake Up Dead Man was a misstep. Here’s why:

1 - There isn’t enough Benoit Blanc.

You’d be hard pressed to find a section of the internet whose love for Knives Out isn’t 75%+ love for Benoit Blanc. The wit, the sass, the accent, the sweaters. People loved him after movie 1 and Johnson seemed to respond to that with even more screen time and focus in movie 2. We even got a glimpse into his home life (and Daniel Craig in the bath!). Wake Up Dead Man misses the mark here. He comes into the story far too late and when he does it’s just not as engaging. He seems more focused on working out what the heck is going on, rather than solving the mystery. Yes those are two different things.

2 - The ensemble-ness of the film is lacking.

One of the strengths of this style of mystery story is the ‘anyone could’ve done it’ aspect. When set up well, as it was in Knives Out 1 and 2, it adds layers to the mystery exponentially. In Wake Up Dead Man you have a cast of great players, but their motives all end up being the same, which doesn’t give you any real reason to lean towards one suspect or another. We also didn’t get a lot of depth of explanation of any other motives.

3 - The ‘impossible’ mystery is a difficult one to land.

These films, and other like it, are ‘whodunnit’ mysteries. At a family dinner or a remote billionaire’s island there is a small group of suspects, all with motive and various opportunities. I loved watching Benoit Blanc work his way through his list of suspects to find the killer. The ‘howdunnit’ doesn’t have the same draw. Focusing the movie on this element then didn’t leave enough space for the actual ‘who’ part.

4 - I didn’t guess it.

I know that kind of makes me seem like a bitter viewer. Maybe I didn’t like the movie because it made me feel dumb. But the reason people consume mysteries is to guess the who of the whodunnit. Solving it just before the detective is a win for the audience. At the very least, when the detective does their big explanation at the end you want to be able to go ‘Yes! That makes sense. I got those bits too!’. In this case that didn’t happen. I needed the entirety of Benoit Blanc’s explanation for me to understand who did it and why. And even that explanation ended up just being a ‘how’ because everyone’s ‘why’ felt the same.

5 - It’s too heavy on the theme.

While the addition of the attached to ‘Miles’ golden teet’ theme of Glass Onion was a very topical and ultimately well-written theme that added a lot of depth to the movie, Wake Up Dead Man leans too heavily on the ‘blind follower’ elements of the story. Far too much time is given to back room dealings of the church and what should have been a subplot about which priest is ‘doing church right’.

All of this adds up to present us with a film that really misses the mark set by the first two movies. It lacks depth where it should in favour of adding story where there didn’t need it. It lacks intricacy in its mystery in favour of social commentary. Overall it lacked the balance between elements that was so good in Knives Out and taken to another level in Glass Onion.

Before Wake Up Dead Man, the mystery-loving world was itching for more Benoit Blanc. We didn’t get enough of him and we didn’t get to see him at his best. If there are plans for more of Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig’s mystery making, I hope the future instalments return to what made the first and second stories so great.