Fr. Mike Schmitz Reacts to "Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery"
The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
Ascension
4.9 • 7.1K Ratings
🗓️ 8 January 2026
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Fr. Mike jumps into the mystery of Knives Out, not to solve the murder but to understand the truest mission of the priesthood.
In the midst of Hollywood's fascination with Catholicism, they've often had trouble capturing an honest representation of Catholics. However, Fr. Mike explores the success of Rian Johnson's appropriate casting and display of a priest in the midst of impossible odds.
Find out what Fr. Mike loved about the film and why he thinks, this time, Hollywood got it right!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Making this is not an endorsement of the movie. The reason why I wanted to make this video |
| 0:05.0 | is because of two scenes. I'm my name's Father Mike Schmitz and this is essentially presents. |
| 0:08.8 | At the end of 2025, a movie was released. It is the third of Ryan Johnson's |
| 0:13.8 | Knives Out Mysteries. This one is called Wake Up Dead Man. It centers around a Catholic |
| 0:17.2 | parish in I think upstate New York. The two kind of protagonists are two priests. |
| 0:22.1 | The people involved in this, mostly are Catholics. This is not a movie that you would say, |
| 0:26.7 | huddle around the TV and watch this movie during the Christmas season and the holiday, |
| 0:31.2 | and ever. I'm not recommending this movie. It is PG-13. I would give it an R-rating. This is not |
| 0:36.6 | made by Angel Studios. So after that, |
| 0:38.8 | being said, here we go. Hollywood still has not yet figured out how to depict a faithful Catholics |
| 0:44.4 | on screen or zealous Catholics on screen or they don't know how Catholics talk. Almost always, |
| 0:50.9 | they end up sounding like a Southern Baptist. Have you noticed that they just, the words that they have in like a Catholic mouth is like, we wouldn't say those things. I just, it's so strange. And I get it. These are like caricatures of certain kinds of Catholics or certain kinds of religious people. Sometimes I think, hmm, we say other weird things. We don't just say those weird things. Okay, number two, the old priest is kind of a bad priest. |
| 1:13.9 | Keep that in mind. |
| 1:15.0 | The young priest is a good priest. |
| 1:16.3 | I think this was kind of interesting. |
| 1:17.6 | Sometimes when they have the old priest, young priest juxtaposition, |
| 1:20.7 | it's because the old priest is like really faithful |
| 1:22.8 | and the young priest is like more kind of unorthodox. |
| 1:26.3 | And that's not the case. |
| 1:27.1 | The old priest is, he's really mean. He's not more or less orthodox. And the young priest isn't unorthodox. I like how they did this. The first image you have of the young priest, Father Judd, is he's punching out a deacon. And you get to know that he, oh, he was a boxer before we went to seminary, all these kind of things, |
| 1:44.4 | has some brokenness in his past, and he even in his own heart. But the thing that makes you |
| 1:49.8 | endearing, endear to him, endeared to him, the thing that makes him endearing is not that he's, |
... |
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