Move over Eddington, "Wake Up Dead Man" is the defining political satire of 2025
Analysing faith as it manifests within America, Johnson once again used the masterful and time-tested device of the whodunnit to try and comment on why "we're all so divided".
You probably know I've already reviewed "Wake Up Dead Man" while at TIFF this year. It was a glowing review, and I am a completely biased Rian Johnson defender, unapologetically. I deeply enjoyed "Glass Onion", a film I fear people misunderstood, or even worse, is still a few years away from being considered properly for its true genius. "Knives Out" was one of the first films I ever saw at a Film Festival, and to this day is a comfort movie of mine.
Johnson has never shied away from the inherent political power dynamics of the whodunnit (we even made a video essay about why), but it's with Dead Man that he takes his most direct hit at the current American Evangelical Political Establishment.
A quote from the review:
At a time where people vastly underestimate the scale and effect of the Christian Right Wing, choosing to dismiss them as kooks – Dead Man decides to take the threat seriously, and acid-strip it to the bare bones of its deadly premise.
In a genre laden with skeleton-filled closets, Johnson posits that this – the roots of trauma – is what gets plugged into by the cult-like addiction to "Faith" as the one controlling force, and that greed powers the engine. At 30,000 feet, this is what all whodunnits are about. What sets the Knives Out series apart is how unafraid it is to look the trauma and pain in the eye – not absolving evil, but finding its human source.
The devils we are fighting are not biblical. They were once children, without sin.
For the spoonies, it's on Netflix now. For the Theatre heads, I hear it's still running in the cinema. Regardless - get a dose of this film and get active talking about it. Rian Johnson forever.
