Hannah Rich delves into the themes of the latest Knives Out film (spoiler free). 18/12/2025

The following is a spoiler–free commentary on the film Wake Up Dead Man.     

In a world where power and religion collide in ever more complex ways, you could make your way through any number of theological analyses before finding as incisive an exploration of our current moment as the latest instalment of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out series, Wake Up Dead Man.  

From the very start of the film, the dichotomy between the two main clergy characters – two personas of the church – is set. Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) is a former boxer relegated to a small parish in upstate New York as punishment for punching a clerical colleague. In his own words, he is “young, dumb and full of Christ… David facing down Goliath,” unpolished but ardent in his faith. His opposite number, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), is a cipher for the institutional church and an inherited sort of cultural religion. The church is his family business; his grandfather sought ordination after the death of his wife, we learn, making him the literal inheritor of the parish, the mausoleum and the mysterious fortune at the heart of the plot.  

“The church doesn’t need some pussy who’s gonna lie down and take it, we need a warrior and I believe God sent Monsignor Wicks to be that warrior,” says one of the parishioners of Chimney Rock. The desire for a warrior priest echoes that of the people who refused to listen to Samuel, instead insisting that “we want a king to lead us, to go out before us and fight our battles.” (1 Samuel 8:19–20). Even when Samuel lays bare for them what having a king would mean, still they want it. Their system is broken and corrupt and they long for the immediacy and power of a king like other nations. To the people of Chimney Rock too, the brashness of Monsignor Wicks looks like a stereotypical warrior king, the sort they are conditioned to want.  

To Father Jud, though, “the priest is a shepherd, the world is a wolf.” “Christ came to heal the world, not fight it,” he says, noting that Monsignor Wicks would do well to learn that. His calling is simply to love his people, to extend grace rather than warfare. By the end of the film, the name of the parish church has shifted from Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude to Our Lady of Perpetual Grace, a literal sign of the changing ethos and priorities of its clergy. 

The origins of the feast of Christ the King – marked liturgically the same weekend that Wake Up Dead Man hit cinemas – was in the restatement of the kingship of Christ in the wake of the First World War. But lately, we have seen the phrase “Christ is King” come to be imbued with all sorts of political meanings and contentions. Christ is the sort of king I like, it can say. Christ is a warrior king, not a shepherd boy. Our understanding of Christ shifts to fit our mould of a king too simplistically, when in reality, Christ shatters the world’s understanding of what a king is.  

Cyril of Alexandria wrote that Christ’s dominion is one “not seized by violence nor usurped, but by his essence and by nature”. Father Jud embodies this; if he comes to command the parish, it is by an essence and nature which is not domineering. It is notable that Johnson has cited GK Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries as a key inspiration for the film. Chesterton himself is credited with saying that “the true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him,” a line which captures Father Jud’s approach to life, faith and the institution. So much of what makes his character so attractive – in a moral sense, although he has been described as heir to co–star Andrew Scott’s ‘hot priest’ mantle from Fleabag – boils down to the matter of how we meet the world at the church doors, with fists poised or arms open.  

Wake Up Dead Man is dripping with religious imagery and metaphors. There are Damascene conversions, confessions as both a sacrament and a police procedure, a forbidden apple, an empty tomb and a woman called Martha (Glenn Close) who simply never stops serving. There are also the sort of congregational details that can only be absorbed through experience; Johnson has been clear that he set out to make “a movie about faith… a movie about the church,” drawing both the material and spiritual substance of his childhood Christianity. 

No spoilers here, save to say that resurrection and an empty grave is an equally compelling mystery to grapple with whether it is a killer plot twist or a theological truth. So too the nature of power, institutional, individual and spiritual.