One Of These People Is The Killer
Daniel Craig’s turn as a murder mystery sleuth by channeling KFC’s colonel sanders is far from over. His third outing as the larger than life protagonist is kicking off again in “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery”. This time he’s sporting long hair, because why not.
The last location, a tech bros paradise has been swapped out for an aesthetic that is far more in line with the genres roots, even gothic in nature. A priest walks into a completely enclosed room during church, and in front of everybody promptly dies. Who among the crowd orchestrated the deed? The film has a tough act to follow after the first film that kicked it all off, but it doesn’t try to replicate that success, it’s comfortable being it’s own thing. I wasn’t over the moon for Glass Onion, and fortunately this movie supersedes it in every way. It’s moodier yet still retains its humour.
Director Rian Johnson has been the steady hand on the tiller for the entire run so far, and his vision of what an Agatha Christie murder mystery looks like constantly shifts with the times.
“What Rian’s movies do best,” Craig says, “is subvert the genre. You start off thinking you’re watching an old-fashioned sort of Agatha Christie-type mystery — but then it shifts, and you realize you’re watching something entirely different.”
The secret sauce to the movies Johnson believes is ensuring Craig’s character is not the central focus. “The secret to each one of these movies is that Benoit Blanc is not the main character of these films. There’s always a protagonist who has some real stakes and skin in the game,” says Johnson. “Josh O’Connor’s character Jud is that character in this movie.”
As far as murder mysteries go there’s nothing quite like it to compare. Except the Hercule Poirot movies I guess.