#wake up dead man

Should I make a full Wicks’ daughter fic once summer quarter starts? yes no do whatever you want who cares

watched wake up dead man yesterday. i don’t know who that priest protagonist is but he could be a star wars villain

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) director: Rian Johnson

I’m going to assume this is a safe space to say this: In Wake Up Dead Man (2025), I thought either Monsignor Wicks or Samson was played by Jeff Bridges, and I couldn’t tell which because they looked the same. Imagine my shock when, at the end of the movie, I find out that neither of those two men are Jeff Bridges, but two different other men that look similar to each other and just happen to look like Jeff Bridges in this particular situation

I finally watched wake up dead man a few days ago, and I really enjoyed the foreshadowing for Wicks and Samson changing places, which occured when my mum and I went “the priest IS the groundkeeper” “no, I think they just look alike” “oh. Really?” “Honestly, now I’m doubting myself, maybe they ARE the same person”

Jesus what am I doing. There’s so much life going on that I’m missing out on. I refuse to die without exploring so much more than I have. Ive packed a lot into my existance since 18 but looking back at the last 5 years I’ve wasted its like my god, I gotta do something different.

Teashop Update My ⤷ masterlist ˎˊ˗ has undergone a little makeover, as you may have seen. I’m temporarily closing my fic requests so I can finish up the ones that have been fermenting in my wip folder. But! My non-fic requests are open as always. Requests are always open for: Headcanons - Alphabets - Reactions - Memes - Moodboards - GIF + Textpost Sets Fic Requests : CLOSED So you can keep sending letters to the teashop with your orders if you’re feeling thirsty, my dears!

I finished wake up dead man! I’m a little sleepy for a full review tonight but i did like it!!! I think one of the main reasons it took me so long was i was little hesitant because its about a church and i was worried how respectful it would be but it did really well on that front! Jud was ahhhh i really liked him and he had a lot of really good things to say about his faith that i really enjoyed listening to! as a Christian i enjoyed it! The mystery was great as always. Stacked fucking cast didnt even realize half those people were in it lollll Wasnt a huge fan of the ending I’m going to put this under a read more for spoilers OKAY SO Jud keeping the jewel. Me and my mother had a whole discussion about this because my mom hated it and I’m kinda on the fence but the more i think about it… i dont really think i like it… So obviously it should in theory belong to Cy but they make a big deal about the temptation of it and how it will corrupt people. It goes along with a big theme in this series about how money will corrupt people and what people will do for it so Jud hiding it would make sense if they are taking the stance that no one should have it (even tho Jud does still have it in this scenario) But the problem is Marta. If we are taking the stance no one should have the money even if it legally belongs to them what about Marta. She was in a similar spot as Cy where due to inheritancy she legally had a right to the money so her getting it in the end was supposed to be a win. Is the difference that Marta is the hero we’re supposed to root for verses Cy is just not super great guy? Because now we’re at the point where Benoit Blanc is keeping peoples money from them just because he doesnt like them and i dont know how i feel about that? Anyways I’d love to hear others opinions on this. Anyways overall tho i really enjoyed it! I still think the first movie is my favorite but this one was really good! I definitely did enjoy it more then glass onion! (Which i also really liked!)

random aesthethic: a man who is running away from his sinful past turns into a clergyman and befriends a detective after getting involved with a murder. the detective is not having it but the clergyman seems to be pretty good at the whole ‘crime-solving’ thing. sidney chambers and geordie keating- grantchester jud duplenticy and benoit blanc - wake up dead man

next chapter is up you can read it here as the author notes says surprise! it’s a case fic! and also while wrangling all these OCs is kind of annoying i can’t wait for y'all to meet my daughter connie

MORIARTY!!!! HELL YEAH I HOPE HES THE KILLER HHEHEE

Purpose is now available to read on ao3!

Finally got around to rewatching Wake Up Dead Man to look at the lights and it felt really, really worth it (on top of fun, my younger sibling and I made a whole event out of it. We had cookies and everything.) I would like to preface that, because the movie is heavily focused on the impacts of religion I do use religious language. I specifically bring up the idea of holiness and unholiness. These can be used interchangeably with the words virtuous and unvirtuous, as I do when speaking about characters who do not view the world through the lens of the Christian faith. However, I felt it would be disingenuous to try and remove the religious implications from a discussion of a film that centers around an organized religion. That being said, let’s begin. The light scheme of the movie was pretty divided. There’s sunlight, which makes several appearances at different points, there’s cold lighting, typically when the sun is behind clouds, and there’s artificial lighting. I will note that the lighting didn’t seem to me to always be Saying Something, but for many of the narrative beats the lighting felt like some form of messaging. Considering the themes of the movie, it seems safe for me to assume that sunlight is representing some kind of holiness, or perhaps the kindness that the Christian religion touts itself to have. Cold light seems to be an absence of holiness or the virtues it’s supposed to come with. Artificial lighting is used to show the attempt of holiness, a way to try and pretend that it’s there for the people watching. So I’m gonna start with Wicks because his lighting seems the most consistent to me. The only time he is ever cast in sunlight is when we first see him enter the church, before we or Jud learn the kind of person he is. The whole lighting of the church fades from that warm sunlight to the cold, washed out light around the time he asks Jud if he’s here to steal the church. Every time after that any scene Wicks is in features either cold or artificial light. No action he takes is virtuous, it is in search for what he’s always wanted: power. When he stands in the pulpit there are spotlights shone upon him, a vain attempt to appear godly as he berates and cajoles and vilifies anyone he has deemed unholy. This holds true even when he is murdered. He is cast in a warm yellow light, artificial in that closet, as if someone is trying to paint his death as some act beyond mortal power. In that same closet, where he drank every sermon. Everyone but Samson knew, but what could they do? He was the Monsignor, he was leading their flock, but he was also a man. Surely, men stumble and stray some, but he was still leading them well, yes? Meanwhile that warm yellow light painted him. A pale, mocking imitation of sunlight. He was no holy man, however much he tried to look it. He needed a veneer of righteousness to get the power he wanted, but it was not born of holiness or virtue of any kind. It was always fake, always an act, one he never realized. The coffin he is supposed to be carried in is cast in warmth, but he isn’t in it. Instead, his body is hidden away, untouched by the sun even through proxy. I believe the sunlight here is in reference to Samson, hiding inside the coffin. A good man doing what he believes is a good thing, because it’s Martha who asked and he would do anything for her. It even applies to Wick’s “revival.” He’s cast in the bright, harsh, motion activated lights, a seemingly divine act. But it’s Samson pretending to be Wicks, making the Monsignor a symbol. A false prophet, if you will. There is no holiness in this act, only a manmade farce. Next, there’s Blanc. There’s less on him, most often cast in whatever light is around, but there are a few moments when it notably shifts around him. When Jud enters the church asking for guidance, Blanc is cast in full sun as he enters and talks with him. That light fades as he begins to speak on his opinions of Christianity. He speaks openly of the ills it has caused, the hatred it peddles, the violence it ignores and at times condones. As he speaks all of the light and color is sucked from the scene, almost leaving the entire church, and even Blanc himself, cast in black and white. It is not dissimilar to the way Wicks sucks the light from a scene, a strange choice for a character who has before been such a force of good that you would have to stretch to find any similarities between him and any of the antagonists. But Wicks and Blanc aren’t overly different, as the lighting implies. They both share an intense hatred for things that they view as wrong. For Wicks it’s people he sees as less, as unworthy, those he cannot control and force to bend to his will. For Blanc, it is those who do wrong for their own selfishness. You can see in previous films how he lashes out at the Thrombey’s, at Miles Bron, the indignation and anger that spills from him at the injustices they’ve caused. He sees Christianity as yet another (although much more pervasive) group of rich, entitled, self-centered, conniving bastards who don’t care who they hurt so long as they get what they want, and often that is power in some shape or form. Blanc and Wicks are both men who hate, and who hate very, very strongly. Both try to use their hate for what they believe is good, but it leads both of them to callousness. But I’m getting just ever so slightly off topic here and should probably correct course. Blanc realizes that venting about his hatred for the church and Christianity as a whole in front of a priest who has just witnessed his colleague murdered and is trying to hold himself together for other people is maybe not the best idea, and the lighting begins to warm again, the sun peaking through the clouds. When he sits with Jud in the pews, he is again cast in sunlight, bright and dazzling and an answer to Jud’s prayer for guidance and strength through this confusion and tumult and guilty joy that the man who tormented him is dead. The lighting fades from full sunlight after this, when the detective comes in to announce that Blanc is supposed to be treating him as a suspect, and it doesn’t brighten when he says he thinks Jud is innocent. His arrival and, more importantly, the hope it brings are the holy things about him. The sun only ever shines directly on him once more, but he is never cast in harsh artificial light. He is not holy, and he makes no effort to present himself as such. And while he isn’t holy, he is rarely cast in that harsh, cold lighting of unholiness again. But rarely isn’t never. When he talks about the thrill of a mystery, of solving it, of unveiling everything before his opponent, how much like a game it is to him, the lighting again washes out and goes cold. It is not the same hatred he nearly emanated in the church, but it is callous. In this moment he, much like Wicks, is reveling in his own sort of power over others, the power to reveal their secrets. He might be using it for a good cause, catching murderers and all, but it is still a cold-hearted way to look at helping people. And then once more, when Jud is calling Louise. It isn’t Blanc who shifts the lighting, but it is him who indirectly caused the shift and it’s him who stays in it. He’s been hurrying Jud to try and get the information because this is so important and they don’t have time and while he doesn’t stop Jud from shutting the door on the room (and on his pushing) he doesn’t get it. He has to stay there for a while and stew on what just happened, why Jud would put the brakes on when this is such an important moment. I think he gets it eventually, seeing the genuine connection Jud forms with Louise to comfort her, to tell her a story so she understands she isn’t alone with her fear and pain. For now, I’m going to hold off on that second time he is bathed in light, which brings us to Father Jud. Jud starts off the movie doing something I know I sincerely wish I could bring myself to do: Socking an asshole in the jaw. The whole scene, up until he enters the church, is in cool tones. No sunlight, especially in the gymnasium the other priests (I don’t know their rank) speak to him in. This is notably the first time the idea of the church needing to hate, or at least fight, that which is other comes up, and it is painted in that cool light of unholiness. Jud’s rebuttal is also painted in this light, but I don’t think that’s because his stance is unholy or unvirtuous. He has not yet grown. His idea of what the church should be, while a good one, has not yet been tested. He has not yet proven that he has what it takes to be a good priest. Then he gets to the church. The surroundings are a little dreary, a little dull, but he steps inside the church and the place lights up for him. We see, through Jud’s perception, all the faith he has, all the good he believes his religion and, by extension, he himself can do. It is quickly swallowed by Wick’s cynicism, hatred, and distrust. But even then, it doesn’t completely go away. He tries to hold that prayer group with the core followers, and the scene is cast in warmth, though it never touches anyone specifically. Even through admitting he killed a man, it remains. His ideals are easily observed, the holiness that he wants so desperately to embody. But the lighting is from inside the house (rectory?), and however warm it is it isn’t real. The holiness he so badly wants just isn’t there. Even if it was not an attempt at takeover, I do still think this is Jud’s bid for some kind of power. Not the hammer and nail kind that Wick’s uses, but power from trust placed in him. He has repeatedly been a punching bag, and he’s looking for a way out. He sees it in befriending the flock, hoping that if he gains some influence with them that what he’s endured will have been worth it. But however well intentioned, it is still Jud trying to get himself a leg up over the people that Wicks feels the need to drive away. To prove that he’s better, he has sway with people, even if it’s not as much as Wicks. And so the light, however warm, is still fake. He is trying to act holy while also trying to serve himself. But, just as he isn’t holy, neither is anyone else in the room. They want to be, they believe they are, but no one in that room has the virtues it would take, and I believe that all of them, save perhaps Martha as she hasn’t done anything yet. This is mirrored in Wicks’ own meeting shortly after. The room bathed in warm, artificial light, everyone’s sins are laid bare. Wicks’ sleeping with a woman and having Cy, then hiding him, claiming him only now that he knows how to get his family fortune. He claims him in front of everyone, acting as if it is priestly goodwill while saying his mother was of no import. It is, of course, brushed aside. He is a holy man, yes, but even holy men stray. The same grace is not extended to his mother, as Vera points out in her own bid to appear holy, if only to prove to herself that she is not so enchanted with Wicks as to ignore his every misdeed. I do think it’s important, though, that the only thing he can say to her is that her father would be disappointed. To Lee he says that his writing is sycophantic. To Dr. Nat he says he knows about him treating patients while drunk and that the town should know. To Simone he says that money cannot grant a miracle. The falsity of their perceived holiness is revealed to all of them, whereas in Father Jud’s meeting he only laid bare his own mistakes. But where Wicks only tears down those around him in his desire for power, Jud takes his time to try and connect with people not because of what they can give him, but because of his own core beliefs. Sunlight shines repeatedly around Jud, but not on him. Take the scene where he calls Louise. He’s in this room lit up by sunlight, where Martha filed and organized to keep the church running, as holy a room as the chapel. At one point as he’s rushing around, trying to push Louise for an answer, he passes back and forth in front of the window, sunlight streaming in, and he cannot see it. He is turned from it, cannot see anything beyond this moment, this clue, this chance to clear his name. It plunges the scene into cold, dim light, and he doesn’t see that either. Doesn’t realize how narrow-minded he has become in his search for who killed the Monsignor. The lighting doesn’t change when Louise asks him to pray for her. It stays cold and dreary, but Jud still makes the choice to stop and listen, to pray for her, to leave the cold behind him and shut the door on it. When we see him later, praying for her over the phone, he isn’t really lit by anything. There are warm lamps around the room, yes, but their light is contained. They aren’t what’s lighting him up, that false light never touches him. He almost seems to be his own source of light, the focus of that scene, casting the rest of the room in shadow. This is the second of three times that, despite the lack of sunlight, Jud acts in a way that is virtuous, like the good priest he wants to be. The third time is when he is taking Martha’s confession, after Blanc is lit up in the church. He’s about to go on his great big speech about whodunnit, and how, and why. He’s about to win his game and rub it in his opponent’s face, but he stops. Bathed in light and, for once, staring into it, he re-evaluates. Stops to listen to himself, to consider the things he knows, and understands that it is not his place. He cannot solve this crime. Not because he lacks the knowledge, but because he doesn’t believe it is the right thing for him to do, especially not like this. So he sits, surrounded by light and refusing to share what he knows. Because the right thing to do is to let the killer, the mastermind, tell her story herself. Martha is a dead woman anyway, they both know it. The right thing to do, the virtuous thing to do, the kind thing to do is to grant her a final confession on her own terms. Her guilt be damned, she deserves someone to listen in her final moments, not someone gloating about a checkmate. The scene where Jud takes Martha’s confession is cold, nearly colorless on the steps to the altar, as Martha admits to something truly unholy. How she taunted Grace in her moment of suffering, how she plotted to murder the Monsignor and manipulated Dr. Nat, how Samson was involved and how he was truly killed, how she in turn, out of revenge, killed Nat, all to save the church, her life’s purpose, and to try to fill out her task of preventing people from falling to the temptation of wealth. A task she feels she failed in, which drove her to act in the first place. It’s terrible. Awful and ugly and driven by fear, despite her believing at the start that she had good intentions. It’s as unholy as you can get, and the lighting reflects it. And Father Jud sits there, hears every terrible thing she did, holds her as she dies, and prays for her to be forgiven, absolves her of her sins, and convinces her to let go of the hate she has carried since she was a little girl. She dies free of fear, of hate, and while what she did hasn’t changed Martha herself did, in those final moments. The lighting doesn’t shift, it stays cold and grey. There is no fake holiness to be found. There is no holiness either. It’s only a man trying his very best to do what he believes is right and comfort a dying, tormented woman. Jud time and again makes the choice to stand by what he thinks is right, even when it would be easier to turn people away. It would have been easy to just hang up on Louise, or to tell her he’d pray for her later, but when turning his back would be easier, and arguably the smarter choice, he chooses to listen to her, to reach out and listen and pray not just for her but with her. He refuses to leave her hanging, forced to trust his word, and chooses to be kind. To be the priest he wants to be. He does the same thing for Martha. And though he may have made the wrong call punching the deacon at the start of the film, he proves at the start he is willing to stand by the idea that everyone deserves forgiveness, that everyone deserves love. I think it’s one of the reasons Blanc literally sees the light at the end of the movie and chooses not to give his speech. When Jud is in the church again at the end, asking Blanc to stay for a sermon, he is not just the source of his own light anymore. He is bathed in sunlight. It bounces off of him and illuminates the whole church, filling it with the same faith he had in the beginning, the same loving ideals he has chosen time after time. The church can become a place of hope and connection again because, despite everything Wicks threw at him, despite everything the flock threw at him, despite what even Blanc, sometimes, threw at him, he never gave up on those things he believed in. He doesn’t want to be a good priest anymore. He is a good priest. It’s something Blanc can see too, lit up by the sunlight haloing around Father Jud. Understands that Jud is not a good priest because he is holy in any sense, but because he is a good man who cares about the people he serves, even if he wears a cassock to do it. I’ve got some extra notes and thoughts that didn’t really fit into the rest of this, so I will put them here. First off, there is one other form of lighting in the film: Firelight. Be it from candles or a fireplace, it only appears occasionally. This does not make it any less important, but its scarce use made it difficult for me to pin down what, if anything, it was trying to convey. My best guess would be that it’s intended to signify a search for truth, but that is a guess. It could bear some weight, given I primarily see it used in the scene where Blanc is reading Jud’s recounting of what happened. In the scene he’s explicitly stated he’s doing this to look for things Jud might have missed or assumed Blanc knew, and in this he finds that Jud returned to the crime scene to take Wicks’ flask in an effort to protect Samson from spiraling back into alcoholism. Notably, Samson is the only member of the flock we meet who hasn’t tied himself to Wicks in some way. Sure he’s the groundskeeper, but his attraction to Wicks comes from genuine faith. He believes the man has quit drinking, and seeing that someone so highly respected struggled the way he has and (seemingly) succeeded gives him the strength to keep himself from going back to drinking. He seems mostly ambivalent to Jud the whole time, even after it comes out that he may have been the one to kill the Monsignor, a stark contrast to the rest who are outright hostile to him even before Wicks’ death. Though it has nothing to do with lighting, I think that’s why he was the one in the coffin. He, like Jud, is a good man who truly puts stock in his religion, and Martha knew he wouldn’t take the diamond because of it. I also wanted to bring up the the missing cross. Every time that the church doors open and shed light on where it used to be, it’s sunlight that’s streaming through the doors. The cross is supposed to be a symbol of grace in Christianity, a sign that your sins can be forgiven through Christ. It is one of the core tenets of the New Testament, this grace and forgiveness. One of the tenets that Jud does his best to embody. Yet, notably, the cross is missing. There is no grace in this place, not for anyone, let along Grace herself who threw it from the wall. She was given none, and so none remains in this place. The sunlight casts a spotlight on what is wrong with the church, why it is such an unholy place even if the Monsignor is gone. The light from the open doors graces the altar but stops at the base of the cross, as if to point out why it cannot flourish here. It is the first sign that Jud and his ideals will not be welcomed here, even before Wicks shows up. Whenever someone opens the doors, they cast a shadow where that symbol of Grace stands and where grace should be instead. I think it’s fitting, then, that the church doesn’t light up until Jud returns the cross. It’s addition is the solidifying of his ideals in this place, and the final step to him becoming a good priest, though more in symbolism than practicality. I would also like to point out the endings for the rest of the flock. Cy never gets cast in sunlight the entire film, even at the end on the sunny day where he threatens Father Jud and demands the diamond. He is as unholy as his father, driven by the same lust for power but unable to attain it. Lee, the writer, is cast in his ending in the fluorescent lighting of a bookstore, smiling for fans he despises as he signs copies of his book. Sure, he got what he wanted. His book is published, and it’s a hit! But it’s not the way he wanted it, a mockery of what he was hoping for, and so he must pretend that this was his ultimate goal. In contrast, Vera the lawyer stands in the sun. She is not haloed in it, it merely lights her. But she has a second chance, and it can be what she wants it to be. She doesn’t need to bind herself to some ideal of what the holy men in her life would want. She can make her own choices. The best of them, I think, was Simone. She, unlike Vera, is haloed. Sitting in her apartment learning to play again, learning to find her own strength and push through her suffering. She’s no longer getting conned, no longer praying for a miracle. She’s making one, bathed in sunlight all the while. If there are any questions you have about things I have said, please feel free to ask them (I wrote this in one four hour sitting, and it’s now early in the morning, so I understand if this is not the most coherent). That being said, I hope you enjoyed this rant/essay/whatever this is

the uprise of collective social mind-numbing and the death of critical thinking .

Watched dead man wake up and god damn, Jud is… Somewhat attractive. An amount of attractive.

I can’t believe people think WUDM is the best movie in the trilogy.

Liking “Wake Up Dead Man” as a jew (orthodox, religious) is a very weird experience. Because on one hand; both sides represented by Benoit Blanc and Father Jud have merit, and both characters have points that I support. But on the other hand, both make their arguments in ways that make me very uncomfortable, i.e. Jud’s repeated mentions of christ, and Blanc’s stance that god is fiction and religion is a sham. I appreciate the nuanced take on religion that the movie has, and I understand that there was no place for the exploration of any other religion in it — but it does bug me that at the end of the day, this movie falls trap to the mindset most of the west has, and especially America: the concept of “religion” and the concept of “christianity” are perfectly interchangeable, and the two sides of the argument are believers and nonbelievers (of jesus christ. Which is also basically interchangeable with god)

I find it really funny the thing that, if Martha had not been in on the plan, would’ve ended with Jud probably being arrested was getting knocked out by Samson. The boxer. Got knocked out, with a single punch.

Did this man kill himself to frame jud lmao? I would not be surprised if he did it feels like something he’d do lmao