There are only so many ways to surprise in the construction of a murder mystery, which is why the set-up of Wake Up Dead Man is understood from the start and goes so far as to cite its sources: Here is a locked-room murder, a la John Dickson Carr's The Hollow Man, and, as we all know, there are only four ways to commit a theoretically possible locked-room murder. If you don't know, the movie will teach it to you. By nature of the genre, the ending of the movie is understood as well: As a romance ends with a happily ever after and a comedy—at least Shakespearean style—ends with a marriage, every whodunnit will end with who did it. Even the ways you can be surprised are understood: It was the person who hired the detective! All of the suspects were in on it! It was the murdered person herself!
For all the exhaustion of franchising, a murder mystery is the ultimate, perhaps least cynical, form. The burden of the traditional murder mystery series is to do something new each time, complicating the twists and turns of the mystery enough so that the surprise of who did it in the end is, well, a surprise, and not so obtuse as to be unguessable. The latter point is, depending on the viewer, not a necessity; I am personally happy simply noticing the writer's sleight of hand for including relevant details, and rarely think actively enough to select a suspect or concoct a possible solution. It is also better for a mystery to err on the side of complication because after all, the hero detective in a murder mystery is necessarily smarter than everyone else in the room, including the audience. Make that detective charming and believable enough, and you can't resent them, or the narrative, for winning every single time.
Rian Johnson's detective is the dapper, heavily Southern-accented Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig, arbitrarily with longer hair this time), and like Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot, he is accompanied by an ordinary person to serve as his intellectual foil. Where Johnson splits from the Dr. Watson sidekick model is that Blanc's foil changes each film, though they share some characteristics: fundamentally good and kind, out of their depth, the true moral center of the film. In Wake Up Dead Man, Blanc's temporary sidekick is Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor), an idealistic young priest sent to a parish run by Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), who tends to a core of parishioners by either preying on their optimism or feeding their resentment of the world. His flock includes such figures as a wannabe Republican influencer-cum-politician who at one point mistakenly compares himself to the Star Wars rebels, and a radicalized science fiction author who wants to escape Substack hell. Subtlety is not and will never be a requirement of the genre; as all of Johnson's Benoit Blanc films, Wake Up Dead Man is unabashedly—and pleasantly—woke.
When Wicks walks into an alcove after an Easter sermon in full view of the parish, collapses onto the floor, and is found dead immediately after, the blame falls on Duplenticy, the outsider and only person in the church to, at first glance, bear active resentment toward Wicks. This is the final characteristic of the Blanc–Johnson sidekick: They need to, in some way, be protected from the murder mystery's machinations. In the original Knives Out, Blanc's investigation poses an active threat to Marta Cabrera, a nurse (with an undocumented immigrant mother) who is initially shown as being responsible for the victim's death.
A murder mystery having a streak of humanism, or speaking to the political environment of its time, is not particularly novel or radical, but the scope of a mystery's politics is bound by its genre. The stories are almost always about private detectives, but the resolution of murderer caught in the end! can only be enforced by the police. Once the murderer is caught, they will be brought to justice, and that justice will look like, presumably, a trial and a tidy time spent in prison. (Knives Out has a grand arrest; its first sequel, Glass Onion, has a series of friends agreeing to testify against a billionaire.) This is fine no matter what the film may or may not believe about cops because in spite of the current state of the American judiciary, the audience knows that in this case justice is assured; the detective, who just had their moment a few minutes ago, does not make mistakes.
The promised surprise in Wake Up Dead Man has very little to do with the minutiae of its mystery. At some point, in some future Benoit Blanc mystery, there may be a time where Blanc's chosen sidekick was the one to do it, though it's a bit hard to fit in with the "kindness always prevails" ethos of the series. Instead, the film does something more formally radical: It willingly undercuts the motivations that typically drive a murder mystery. The turning point is not some escalation or grand reveal, but a phone call with a construction company employee named Louise (Bridgett Everett). Father Jud, at this point fully co-opted into Benoit freakin' Blanc's investigation, is trying to wrangle information from Louise over the phone. The conversation is funny and frenzied and frustrating: Louise is dedicated to cheery small talk as Father Jud attempts to cut in, and Blanc is in the room, urging him to move on, ask the question, hang up. They're trying to solve a murder! Cut to the chase! Stop talking!
Then the room goes quiet. After a stretch of silence, Louise asks Father Jud, teary, "Will you pray for me?" Her mother is in the hospital, unwell, and their last conversation did not end on kind terms. It is an excoriating interjection from the outside word. Father Jud, played by O'Connor with such humor and care and tenderness, steps away from Blanc to speak to her. The investigation stalls; Blanc is forced to wait while they talk on the phone in the next room. Once the conversation is over, Father Jud tells Blanc that he is through with assisting with the investigation. He has had his Road to Damascus moment. He does not want to play at detective or service Blanc's perfect truth; he wants to be a priest.
The span of the film from Father Jud's refusal to be co-opted into a murder mystery narrative to the eventual whodunnit reveal is a somewhat confused stretch of events that can be blocked out as such: things happen; details are withheld. If you are watching for a murder mystery evaluated purely on the quality of its mystery, the film probably won't do it for you; the temptation is to say that Wake Up Dead Man is a murder mystery that is not about the murder mystery, but that is grossly insufficient. The emotional pay-off of the film's ending is contingent on the audience and Blanc's shared desire for a big reveal. The set-up is there; the flock is gathered to listen. Blanc goes to speak—but in the end, refuses to name the murderer because, inspired by Father Jud and a trick of lighting, he, too, has had a Road to Damascus moment. He will show grace to his enemy.
Wake Up Dead Man doesn't tell you to feel stupid for wanting an answer. You get your answer. It only asks that you—and Blanc—sacrifice the great hero detective's triumph, just this once, and manage to find the emotional catharsis of a plot untangled on someone else's terms. Here is the purest pay-off for Johnson's insistence on having so much heart in his murder mystery series: Eventually, that heart will win out over even the genre's traditional demands. Blanc willingly accepts a public loss and steps aside so Father Jud can take someone's confession. There is no arrest or justice, only an outpouring of grace and dignity and forgiveness. You might actually believe in something.
