Wake Up Dead Man: an enjoyable slice of murderous Christm...

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Academic rigour, journalistic flair Wake Up Dead Man: an enjoyable slice of murderous Christmassy fun Published: December 2, 2025 6.31pm GMT Louis Bayman, University of Southampton

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Louis Bayman
Associate Professor in Department of Film Studies, University of Southampton

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Louis Bayman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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University of Southampton provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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https://doi.org/10.64628/AB.r7mh57rsy

A priest and a well-dressed man in a suit standing amongst the pews of a church.

Wake Up Dead Man. John WIlson / Netflix https://theconversation.com/wake-up-dead-man-an-enjoyable-slice-of-murderous-christmassy-fun-271001 https://theconversation.com/wake-up-dead-man-an-enjoyable-slice-of-murderous-christmassy-fun-271001 Link copied Share article

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Murder has never been as comforting as in the Knives Out series, whose third instalment, Wake Up Dead Man, is out now in cinemas and will be available to stream from December 12 as one of Netflix’s Christmas offerings. It clocks in at nearly two and a half hours of suspense, comedy and enough asides about religion and politics to get any traditional festive arguments going.

Daniel Craig’s quick-witted but laconic southern private investigator Benoit Blanc doesn’t show up until about an hour into proceedings. Narration is handed over instead to Father Jud (Josh O’Connor), a former boxer who became a Catholic priest after killing a man in the ring.

O’Connor carries the film, not to say this winter season more generally in cinemas, occupying the starring role in Kelly Reichardt’s arthouse heist film The Mastermind last month, and The History of Sound which will be out next month.

Father Jud recounts the events leading up to murder in a far-flung parish in upstate New York, where a small group of parishioners have fallen under the unorthodox preachings of the cultish Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin).

To say much more would risk giving away some of the mystery that Wake Up Dead Man advertises in its title, so let’s just say that the set-up of a priest battling perdition and the weird parishioners he is stuck with make up a cast of characters who each have their reasons for murder.

This potential is amplified by the fiery sermons of the Monsignor, who is less a guiding shepherd to the credulous flock and more a vengeful wolf. He details his vivid fantasies in confession to the cringeing Jud, as the very definition of a loose canon.

Wake Up Dead Man is an engaging comic mystery with an all-star cast, with Craig, O’Connor and Brolin joined by Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott and Glenn Close, who hams up the gothic elements of the script with relish. This is a “locked-room mystery”, a genre begun by Edgar Allan Poe’s 1841 short story The Murders in the Rue Morgue, where murder is committed in the apparently impossible conditions of a completely closed room. The film is then not only a whodunnit but a howdunnit.

Wake Up Dead Man is aware of its own literary inspirations, which if they weren’t already clear are listed as the subjects of the parish reading group. The film is set over Easter weekend, but the idea of a good murder has become staple Christmas fare, making it no surprise that Netflix has scheduled this film for the holiday market. But what is it in the genre that makes murder so Christmassy?

Death as a puzzle

Detective fiction is unique in the way it treats death. Unlike horror, it does not dwell on the terrifying vulnerability that is our mortal condition. And unlike the war film, death is not the price for adherence to a civilisational ideal. Nor is there much sense of the sacredness of life, for death in detective fiction is treated less as a tragedy to mourn than a puzzle to solve.

Kerry Washington and Glenn Close sitting together in a dimly lit room.

Kerry Washington with Glenn Close who hams up the gothic element fabulously. Netflix

Detective fiction depicts a world where mystery is no longer proof of the ultimately unknowable workings of the divine. Mystery is instead a problem to be met by the calculations of logical deduction. But as the various lustful, greedy characters of detective fiction demonstrate, if rationality provides the only source of meaning, what is there to stop us from pursuing total amoral self-interest? What is there to stop us, indeed, from murder?

The shared narration between detective Blanc and Father Jud means that Wake Up Dead Man becomes an enquiry not only into a murder but the antagonism between reason and God. Blanc states his atheism as soon as he arrives at the church that is now a crime scene. But a heavenly light shines through its windows to brighten its gloom as Father Jud provides his justification for faith.

Wake Up Dead Man nicely satirises how charismatic leaders can elicit the irrational passions of their followers for self-interested ends, but the film is not itself a rejection of belief. Of course, the intensity of a closed setting, where a lifetime of stored resentments, jealousies and greed spill over into brutal hatred, may also be why murder mysteries seem so appropriate at Christmas.

My main disappointment with Wake Up Dead Man is how underused its supporting players are; the ensemble nature of the whodunnit works best when attention is divided among a cast of characters, each of whom could be a potential murderer. But its closing revelations layer twist upon twist with enough force to make for a satisfying ending to an entertaining story.

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