2025 was a year for cinema worldwide. With the release of instant classics such as ‘Sinners’ and ‘Hamnet’, and the MCU providing setup for the eagerly awaited ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ with ‘The Fantastic Four’ and ‘Thunderbolts’, the cinemophiles have been well fed this year.
Despite these award-winning movies sweeping the box offices, there’s only one that has managed to land on the favourites list, and that is the third instalment in the ‘Knives Out’ detective series, ‘Wake Up Dead Man’.
Starring Daniel Craig as the suave, world-famous detective Benoit Blanc, ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ revolves around the murder of a priest who ruled his parish with an iron fist in an idyllic American village, with the main suspect being a boxer-turned-priest named Father Jud.
In order to clear Jud’s name and figure out who really killed the seemingly beloved Monsignor Wicks, the two join forces, uncovering ugly truths about the residents of the village as they go. Although the summary is vague, this is a film better experienced than read about.
While the other two films in the ‘Knives Out’ series are excellent in their own right, the main feature of ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ that sets it apart is the subject matter it so deftly deals with, namely, a multifaceted view on religion and the different ways people use it as a method to deal with hardship.
Aspects of the Catholic Church are addressed consistently, greed, corruption, and an inflated sense of self-importance, most obviously through the character of Monsignor Wicks. Wicks embodies everything negative about the church, using fear, anger, and hatred in order to keep his parish in line.
He cares little for the values attributed to a more kind and forgiving God, namely the line of ‘love thy neighbour’, preferring to scare thy neighbour straight so that they either leave the church or become a member of his inner circle.
Wicks uses religion as a method of control, something that is becoming ever more common as politicians and leading world figures invoke Bible passages in order to incentivise their followers to believe in what they preach.
Compared with Father Jud, the church should be teaching love, compassion, and forgiveness over petty hate and violence. Jud is kind for the sake of it, rather than wishing for something in return, simply wishing to help people through God, as God once helped him when he was a boxer.
Even then, he respects other people’s opinions and religions, not pushing his beliefs onto Blanc when he tells him he’s an atheist, but rather accepting it and moving on.
The idea that everyone must give their lives to Christ or burn in eternal hellfire is one Jud doesn’t believe in, and kindness shines through his interactions with all the characters in this film.
‘Wake Up Dead Man’ is a humorous, philosophical, and emotional rollercoaster from start to finish, and its enigmatic cast and excellent story solidified it in my heart as my definitive favourite film of 2025.
