In Rian Johnson’s third installment, Benoit Blanc leaves glass mansions and yachts behind for a quiet Catholic parish where a murder is committed during mass. Young priest Jud, exiled to Chimney Rock for his temper, struggles to fit into the world of charismatic monsignor Weeks and his devoted flock. The inner circle includes a sci-fi writer who has found God, a doctor on the verge of collapse, a lawyer with a tangled past, a vlogger-turned-populist, and a musician hoping for a miraculous cure.
Soon the cozy parish starts to look more like a cult, and Weeks’s fiery speeches about sin and enemies of the people echo modern populist rhetoric. Johnson once again uses the whodunit framework to talk politics: parishioners curse liberals, excuse their leader for everything, and eagerly sign up for any extremism. This time, though, he strikes a more conciliatory tone — rather than simply condemning these people, he views them as lost souls worthy of pity.
The real center of the story is not Blanc but Jud — a former thug and boxer trying to live by Christian mercy and constantly tripping over his own nature. His inner struggle feels more alive than the detective’s declared change of heart: the atheist Blanc supposedly learns compassion from the priest, but the shift plays more like a statement than a journey. The star-studded ensemble impresses on paper, yet many characters feel underwritten or swallowed by the film’s topical commentary.
The mystery itself is, as before, baroque and deliberately theatrical: an “impossible murder” in full view of witnesses, gothic flashbacks, desecrated relics, and a mandatory torrential downpour. The concept is fun, but the investigation relies heavily on coincidences and chance encounters rather than precise deduction. Visually, the film is striking — stained glass, shafts of light, churchy kitsch — yet the barrage of obvious metaphors can be tiring. “Wake Up Dead Man” remains watchable and occasionally sharp, but Johnson’s constant, self-aware commentary leaves a lingering sense of fatigue with his own game.