When I first watched “Knives Out” in 2019, I instantly fell in love with it. Its distinctive aesthetic paired with vibrant characters, social commentary and a twisty, gripping narrative made the film stand out within the whodunit genre.
When I heard the film would be turned into a franchise, I was so excited because the first film provided so much potential for expanding the “Knives Out” universe. Unfortunately, I was pretty disappointed with the second film, “Glass Onion,” as it seemed to lose some of the charm and singularity of the first film. However, I still hoped the writer and director, Rian Johnson, would make a much-needed comeback with the new installment, “Wake Up Dead Man,” which was released on Netflix on Dec. 12.
To my great dismay, I was once again disappointed by this film and am now left thinking a good “Knives Out” sequel may be just as impossible as the murder within the movie.
“Wake Up Dead Man” follows Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor), a priest who gets sent to work as an assistant pastor in a rural parish led by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin). After a seemingly impossible murder, renowned investigator Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is called in to solve the crime.
I’ll start with the things I liked about this film.
Craig was once again phenomenal as Blanc; I loved watching him any time he was on screen. I also thought O'Connor really shone in this movie as Jud. He brought to life such a beautiful and funny character who really was the heart of this film.
The movie is also visually stunning. The setting is beautiful and definitely captures some of the aesthetics of the first film better than the sequel did.
There's some beautiful scene and I also loved the classic "murder mystery" cinematography used with dramatic zoom-ins and quick pans.
The visual symbolism in the lighting and color was also done very well. There are some moments where the change in color grading and lighting is really apparent, and it does a great job of visually representing the different characters and their ideals.
I also liked the themes explored within the film, especially those involving religion. The film essentially explores religion through three lenses: that of an extremist who uses religion as a means to control people, that of someone who genuinely wants to help people through faith and that of a non-believer. These different perspectives do a good job of providing the audience with different views and facets of religion, which creates a holistic examination of the subject.
I definitely thought the moments in the film in which they explored the help and harm of religion were the strongest and were the only appealing part of this film to me besides the cinematography.
Now onto the things I didn’t enjoy about this film, because there’s a lot.
The pacing throughout the film was so slow and left me feeling bored and uninterested for a majority of the time. I wish the film had started immediately with the murder, instead of spending nearly 30 minutes explaining the buildup to it before it actually happened, because it took a while for the plot to actually get interesting.
After the murder finally happened, I spent the rest of the movie waiting to get to the meat of the investigation, but it never really did. Suddenly, near the end of the movie, Blanc explained everything that happened and the confession without much investigation work even being done.
This brings me to my next point. This film really sidelined Blanc. He's such an integral part of this series, and while I like that they also focused on Jud, it seemed like Blanc didn't really do anything the entire film.
He just walked around places, being puzzled, not really investigating anything, but then suddenly he figured everything out.
While I know Johnson likes to play with Blanc knowing more than he’s letting on in the other films, in this one it just felt too unrealistic, and I genuinely don’t understand how he figured out the crime.
On that note, the explanation behind the murder plot was absolutely ridiculous. I spent the majority of this movie confused and when they finally explained what happened, I still left the movie bewildered.
Again, I know a lot of the murder plots in this film franchise are convoluted, but this one was on another level. I think this movie falls into the problem of trying to throw the audience off so much by having unexplainable things happen that then when they are explained, it just doesn’t seem realistic.
Additionally, I think something that always stands out to me in this franchise are the cast of characters who make up the film. That is, until this installment.
While I think Jud’s character was strong and carried the film, all the other characters were so bland. They lacked so much personality and distinctiveness and quite frankly played such an unimportant role.
Usually, the surrounding characters who become suspects all play such a vital role in the murder plot and constantly have you second guessing which one of them is guilty. But in this movie, it almost felt like they were just shoved into the film to have a bigger cast of characters, despite doing nothing for the plot.
All in all, this film felt like rage bait. This film franchise has so much potential, and I know Rian Johnson has the ability to create a story that’s just as good as the original film, and yet all these sequels end up falling flat.
Johnson has stated that he has ideas for further sequels, but none have been announced yet.
I think I have officially given up hope of ever getting an installment in the “Knives Out” franchise that even remotely lives up to the original, so I won’t even get my hopes up for the next one.
