Review: Wake Up Dead Man (Patreon)

After two films as a confessor, Benoit Blanc takes a backseat to a master of the craft. Father Jud (Josh O'Connor) is set to become a classic noir protagonist — a wounded, compassionate, righteously angry man with a troubled past. Like Ana de Armas' Marta in Knives Out, Father Jud is a caretaker, seeking to heal the hopeless people around him. He shines a ray of light in a tradCath cult, giving his pastor's cultists a possible road to Christ. For once, Blanc has been bested at his own game.

Wake Up Dead Man is good stuff — a solid execution of Rian Johnson's characteristic "what mystery are we solving?" game. Taking Benoit Blanc into noir territory after the (admittedly fun) sameness of Glass Onion is a solid move. It'll be nice to see Rian Johnson do another kind of story, but it's just as nice he got to tell this one.