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Where was ‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery’ filmed?
Much of the action in the movie takes place in the Hudson Valley – outdoors in the lush forests surrounding the church, and in cosy, older homes and offices that feel quintessentially Northeast. But production actually occurred primarily in London, with the English countryside making a fine dupe. From the centrepiece location of the beautiful Neo-Gothic church to the kitschy townie bar Il Diavolo, here are some of the most significant sites used during production.
What town is Chimney Rock based on?
The entirety of the mystery unfolds in the small town of Chimney Rock. In order to create the fictional upstate town where the movie was set, the production team started off by scouring Google Maps. The film’s production designer Rick Heinrichs says the team was certain that they wanted the town to be in a river valley where there was a strong sense of history and settledness. Ultimately, they landed on the town of Cold Spring, a little over an hour north of New York City. “It had all the elements we were looking for with a main street that goes straight down to the river,” Heinrich says, “We did some drone scouting and some environmental photography and then we added Chimney Rock [in post-production] into the background.”
While most of the key scenes from the film were shot in England, Cold Spring isn’t just an inspiration for Chimney Rock – it was actually used as the backdrop in some transition shots. They’d already shot some of the town establishments on a stage at the Leavesden Studios in London and then they planned exactly where on the actual main street of Cold Spring they would insert those businesses. “There are a few things that got quite expertly added by Giles Harding, our visual effects supervisor. He added the church steeple in the background of some of the shots [of Cold Spring], the titular Chimney Rock, and the storefront of our bar, Il Diavolo.”
Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude
Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude has an epic feel with its intricate stonework and beautiful stained-glass windows, especially for a worship house with such a puny population. It’s one of the few sites where we see the whole cast together and it is also a place where fears are stoked and weaknesses are preyed upon. It’s an exemplary Catholic church, one part divine and one part petrifying. To find such an edifice that also was plausibly located in New York state was a difficult task in England, where most churches are Anglican and were erected long before the United States was founded.
The church that fit the bill within their shooting radius ended up being Holy Innocents Church in High Beech, a mid-nineteenth-century Neo-Gothic church just outside of London. “It was just old enough to give us the right feel, but not so old that it looked decrepit and un-American,” Heinrichs says. We see Monsignor Wicks greeting his congregation outside Holy Innocents Church, but due to the relatively small and dull interior, the scenes inside are a church constructed on stage. “The interior that we built on stage was about twice as large as the real interior of the church.”
