Before ‘Wake Up Dead Man,’ Stream This Chilling Prime Video Horror Movie To Set The Mood
This week, Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out mystery film, Wake Up Dead Man, will hit theaters ahead of an eventual Netflix streaming release. It’s a must-watch for fans of whodunits, but Wake Up Dead Man also has plenty of creepy imagery to draw in the horror crowd, including some moments that couldn’t help but remind me of one of the best religious horror films ever made: The Exorcist III.
Like The Exorcist III, Wake Up Dead Man is one of those movies that blends questions of faith and religious ritual with real-life murders. Of course, unlike Wake Up Dead Man, The Exorcist III fully embraces its horror lineage as a successor to one of the scariest movies ever made. That means brutal crime scenes, horrifying moments of psychological terror, and of course, one of the greatest jump scares ever committed to film.
Set 15 years after The Exorcist, The Exorcist III follows a detective (George C. Scott) working a case that seems to have uncanny ties to that legendary exorcism from a decade and a half earlier. It seems a dead serial killer known as “Gemini” is striking again, or at least he’s got some very clever copycats. What follows is a twisted trail of demons and madness, all leading back to one of the original exorcists, Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller). Though he was presumed dead, Karras is actually locked up in a psychiatric hospital with no apparent memory of who he was (at least at first), and now seems to be possessed by the Gemini Killer. The idea of a killer possessing someone means that the killer could potentially hijack just about any body for a murder, which brings us to a jump scare I’m still thinking about.
It takes place in a long hospital hallway, where everyone seems to be going about their business. We get all the usual beeps and hums and shuffles of a hospital ward as nurses, doctors, security guards, and more mill around, and the world grows quiet as we wait for something to happen. And we wait, and wait some more, until just when you think nothing’s coming, a white shape crosses the frame, weapon in hand, ready to inflict pain. In his Overlooked Motel segment on The Exorcist III, Dread Central’s Tyler Doupe’ called the moment a “cinematic heart attack” that helps make the sequel even scarier than the original.
So, why the Wake Up Dead Man comparison? Well, because The Exorcist III is also a film about a priest and a detective trying to solve murders together, but more than that, there’s a sense of atmosphere and bombast to Rian Johnson’s new film that feels right at home next to Blatty’s. There’s something grandiose, almost mythic, about the way these films lay out their mysteries, and while the pairing is unexpected, I think the two films make great companions.
The Exorcist III is now streaming on various services, including Prime Video. Give it a watch before you see Wake Up Dead Man, and you’ll notice some of the same religious horror parallels that I did.
Categorized: Streaming News
