‘Wake Up Dead Man’ Asks Questions About Christianity, But Dodges The Tough Ones
Editor’s note: This article contains spoilers.
(REVIEW) I’ve often said the reason film traditionally tackles religion so poorly is that Hollywood understands film but not faith, and Christians understand faith but not film. Happily, both have been improving in recent years. Christians have been making better films — like “The Chosen” and “The Last Rodeo” — and Hollywood has been making films that understand faith better such as “Wildcat” and “Conclave.”
There’s certainly a lot to celebrate in this new crop of Hollywood faith films. Unlike many previous Hollywood depictions, films like “First Reformed,” “Silence,” Conclave” and “Last Days” treat their protagonists’ faith as sincere and sometimes even noble.
The films strongly critique many aspects of religion, but they leave it open that these problems might be corruptions of faith rather than faith itself. In doing so, they present themselves as more of a dialogue with faith communities than a rejection. Maybe most importantly, they address questions of faith that many Christians themselves pose.
READ: Faith Deserves Better News Coverage — And Here’s How You Can Help
“Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” follows in this tradition and has been celebrated by Christians and non-Christians alike. It has a 92% from critics and 94% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, and Christian outlets like Christianity Today have given the film glowingly positive reviews and specifically for its representations of faith.
There are many really good things about “Wake Up Dead Man” and I’m grateful to Rian Johnson for engaging in these topics honestly and in good faith. But the film also shares many problems with other recent Hollywood faith-based films.
The film tries to present a positive vision of faith that transcends the culture wars, but it often encourages the very discourse that makes them inevitable. Since the film wants to have a good-faith conversation about faith, part of that is going to involve pushback as well as praise.
Written and directed by Rian Johnson, this latest in Johnson’s celebrated “Knives Out” franchise once again follows the world-famous detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) as he this time investigates the death of a local fire-and-brimstone catholic priest, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), and attempts to exonerate the kindly priest, Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Conner) accused of his murder.
Like all the “Knives Out” films, “Wake Up Dead Man” is a fun Agatha Christie-esque mystery with twists, humor, and a great cast. Also like the other films, this one focuses on taking a modern cultural topic–whether it’s “Old Money” (“Knives Out”) or “New Money” (“Glass Onion”) — and making a satirical takedown of it. In this case, Rian Johnson is pulling from his own experiences growing up Evangelical, but portraying them in the context of a Catholic church.
There’s plenty to enjoy as a believer. Father Duplencity speaks of his faith in vivid theological terms, how Jesus redeemed him as a sinner, and therefore, he wants to do the same for others. His discussions with Benoit Blanc on the validity of religious belief are thoughtful and reflect many of the conversations my friends and I have had.
Church architecture, uniforms, and rituals reflected something true that can’t be expressed any other way feel like they could have been ripped straight from my favorite Christian authors and friends. It’s praise for the specifically “religious” aspects of Christianity is particularly refreshing in an age where “spirituality” is seen as good but “religion” is treated with suspicion. As a preacher's kid, the scene where Father Duplencity counsels the grieving woman deeply resonated as something I saw my dad do often.
Where “Wake Up Dead Man” fails is in its main thesis of what “good Christianity” vs. “bad Christianity” looks like. The film repeatedly argues that religion is good when it loves the world and/or sinners, but goes wrong when it battles them. Father Duplencity states this as his personal thesis at the beginning. As the film progresses, that conviction sets him at odds with Monsegnor Wicks and his toxic brand of “us vs them” Christianity, so Duplencity tries to undermine him. This comes to a head when Wicks dies, and Duplencity is accused of his murder.
But in one key scene, Father Duplencity has a change of heart. He has been trying to bring Wicks’ killer to justice and clear his own name. But he decides that this is at odds with his calling as a priest. This calling is to love his congregation the way Jesus loved him while he was still a sinner, not to defeat him but to redeem him. He doesn’t believe he can do this while still bringing that person to justice. This so convicts Blanc that Blanc decides to forgo revealing who the killer is so that the killer can privately confess their sins to Duplencity before dying of self-inflicted poison.
Making a murder mystery’s theme the clash between mercy and justice is a very solid choice. Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express” is a great example of that same question posed in the same genre.
The problem is that “Wake Up Dead Man” never resolves this conflict. The film conveniently has the villains get justice without the heroes having to enact it. Which means they never have to either a) find a synthesis for those values or b) make the tough choices to choose one or the other and pay the price. That makes the film’s ending feel unearned. Ironically, a common problem in many traditional faith-based industry films.
But it's even worse when it comes to contributing to the Christian cultural conversation. Many Christians in real life do criticize the “culture war” model of Christianity, which seeks to battle what they perceive to be the evils of secular culture.
They argue this culture warring is unloving toward the world that Jesus tried to save, stoking more hate and division than Christlikeness. They try to replace it with different models, such as “culture care” (a term popularized by renowned Christian artist and author Makoto Fujimura) or “cultural engagement,” and “third wayism” (associated with popular Christian leaders like the late Tim Keller), which focus on working toward the world’s good as partners wherever possible.
But other Christians respond that this distinction between “loving” the world and “fighting” is often unhelpful and even manipulative. What distinguishes fighting a “culture war” from just speaking out against evil? Martin Luther King Jr. spoke against the church for being silent in the face of racism. How is that different from speaking out against abortion? Growing up, I saw how much people loved my dad for his kindness and love. But I also saw how quickly many turned on him the moment he told them “no”.
The result is people typically just praise culture warring when they agree with it and condemn it when they don’t. Christians who are on the receiving end of this double standard recognize it and then end up ignoring the critiques of culture-warring to follow men like Wicks. And because they perceive men like Wicks are the only ones who will stand up for them, they ignore or excuse the problems with them.
“Wake Up Dead Man” gives more heat than light to this debate. It adamantly sets Duplencity as the “good Christian” because of his hardline stance in favor of mercy. But because it conveniently dispatches its villains without the hero's involvement, it does so without either showing how to incorporate fighting wolves into that vision of mercy or acknowledging that the problem is complicated. This means viewers who see themselves as “lover/not fighter” Christians will feel validated and judgmental against the culture warriors (rather than empathetic towards them) while still culture-warring without realizing it.
Good Christians will become more silent. Culture warriors will see it as propaganda and dismiss it. Those who need someone to fight for them will flock to the culture warriors. Few will be guided to be more like Jesus.
What adds fuel to this fire is how overtly partisan the film is. All the “Knives Out” films make the villains conservatives and conservative archetypes, and “Wake Up Dead Man” is no different. Wick’s culture warring is largely on issues of the traditional family, of traditional Christian sexuality, etc. All the people in his congregation are religious right archetypes, from opportunistic GOP politicians cynically sowing fear and division for power, divorced male incels, judgmental church ladies, and charismatic wheelchair-bound congregants hoping for miraculous healing.
There’s nothing wrong with making a movie where religious conservatives are the bad guys. But if the target of your film is toxic culture warring, it strains your credibility to blame this primarily on them when both sides are to blame. There’s plenty of evidence that the political left is far more politically active (and atheists way more than Chrsitians), more likely to justify and engage in political violence, believe in limiting free speech, to cut off relationships over politics, are equally politically biased, likely to believe in conspiracy theories, and likely to exaggerate the number of radicals on the other side. Because “Wake Up Dead Man”’s blame is so one-sided, it feels far more like it’s picking a side in the culture war than critiquing it.
Films like "Wake Up Dead Man", along with other films in the Hollywood faith-based renaissance like "First Reformed" and “Conclave” have shifted from attacking religion to attacking religious right in favor of a more progressive Christianity. But these films typically fail to address a simple question: if your vision of Christianity is the solution to the problems of Christianity, why hasn’t it worked yet? I grew up Episcopalian, a part of American mainline protestantism. We had Father Duplencitys everywhere, who emphasized welcoming the sinner and distanced themselves from the religious right. And yet, these are the churches that are dying the most and the fastest.
The American mainline, the most liberal Protestant churches in America, have been bleeding members like an open wound since the 1970s. In the 70s, they were at 30% in America, Black Protestants were at 9% and Catholics were at 27%. Evangelicals, which make up the majority of the religious right, started at 18%. Now, the mainline has cratered to 8.7%, black protestants down to 4.4%, and Catholics down to at 22%. Evangelicals? They actually went up to 19.5% during the same period.
That means any movie with a meaningful critique of them must also examine the culpability of those who gave them the mic in the first place. If you want to offer your version of Christianity as the solution to Christianity, you have to explain how you’re going to be different from the version that is dying. (A version that’s also, on many issues, very out of step with the rest of global Christianity, which is actually growing). If you don’t even address that and attempt some answer (any answer!) it’s hard to take your analysis seriously.
There’s also a tacit agreement in many of these movies that the hope for Christianity lies in a future where Christianity can be different, because Christianity’s past is awful.
In “Wake Up Dead Man” Benoit Blanc gives a long-winded rant about Christianity, accusing it of being primarily one of oppression, violence, misogyny, and homophobia. This is an accusation Duplencity never corrects, even though he corrects Blanc about other things. And one easily could.
You could note, like historian Tom Holland, that Christianity introduced the values of compassion and human dignity to the West. You could note that slavery was universal, but Christians universalized its abolition. You could note that wherever Christian missionaries went, the standard of living, particularly for women, improved. You could note that even today, the men most likely to treat their wives and children well are evangelical men committed to the church. At best, Blanc’s accusation is grossly one-sided. And it’s important to correct because it gets to the heart of the Christian claim that Jesus changes lives.
“Wake Up Dead Man” and other recent Hollywood films deserve credit for moving the ball forward on Hollywood depictions of Christianity onscreen. Unlike previous incarnations of Hollywood fare, they have taken the much-needed step of critiquing religion from the inside as well as the outside.
The flip side of that is that they are often reflecting the toxic discourse within these faith communities as well as the positive ones. Hopefully, these films, like faith-based industry films, will continue to get better. But like with faith-based industry films, that will probably only happen if we talk about it.
“Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” is streaming now on Netflix.
Joseph Holmes is an award-nominated filmmaker and culture critic living in New York. He is co-host of the podcast “The Overthinkers” and its companion website theoverthinkersjournal.world, where he discusses art, culture and faith with his fellow overthinkers. His other work and contact info can be found at josephholmesstudios.com.