by Joseph Perry and Mike Imboden
In our “The Good, the Bad, and the Verdict” film reviews, Joseph and Mike give their thoughts on a slice of cinema. For this installment, it’s Canadian shocker Wake Up, from François Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell, and Borsalino Productions.
Synopsis
Gen Z activists are violently picked off by a deranged night watchman after sneaking into an environmentally destructive big-box furniture store.
The Good
Joseph: There’s no shortage of blood-spilling bedlam in Wake Up, and Special Effects Makeup Artist Juan Olmo and everyone else involved in bringing the gruesome kills and their gore-soaked aftermaths to cinematic life deserve a great deal of credit for what makes this film tick. Codirectors François Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell — collectively known as RKSS — know their ways around wild genre films boasting plenty of the red stuff brought to levels of absurdity, so their turns at the helm here are naturally impressive.
Mike: This is a hard one to classify which makes it sort of hard for me to review because I like nothing more than making comparisons and references to things when I’m writing these up. I guess I’d have to say that Wake Up is like a smoothie made from Home Alone, the 80’s slasher Hide and Seek, and maybe a pinch from “Of Mice and Men” — and I don’t even know if that is really accurate.
One of the guards (Turlough Convery), as mentioned in the synopsis, is a bit messed up in the head and is into “primitive hunting,” which entails building traps and his own weapons, skills which one would not expect to need while working at an Ikea-type of store, and yet, here we are. There are some cool and gnarly traps (nothing crazy and elaborate like from a Saw movie) with plenty of tissue damage and bloodshed on display, and with six kids to stalk, there’s plenty “MacGyver-ing” of items going on.
While the kids are all fairly interchangeable, our burly and psychotic guard is a blast to watch as his mind justifies what he is doing by transporting himself into a jungle setting. This is honestly a clever and effective trick allowing us to see into the guy’s psyche, if even only a little bit.
The plot is simple, and at a lean <90 minutes, Wake Up never feels like things are happening just to pad the run time, which is always a welcome aspect.
The Bad
Joseph: The RKSS codirecting trio combined gore and humor to great effect in its 2015 debut feature Turbo Kid, a film that impressed me so much that I watched it twice in the same week (a rare feat for me) when it played at South Korea’s Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival. Here the filmmakers eschew all of the feel-good vibes from that film and, working from a screenplay by Alberto Marini, merely serve up a gorefest of booby traps, sadism, and rat [plural expletive deleted].
I have stated several times in my film reviews that it is not easy for me to get behind a horror movie if viewers are not given at least one likable protagonist for whom to root — or at least an antihero or antagonist who has a valid reason for being one. With Wake Up, alas, we have none of this — just a bunch of rich kids (save for the one young woman who comes from a working family and points out this difference) screwing around needlessly playing paintball after committing what they perceive as activism, and a man with obvious anger issues. This lack of at least one character to get behind is a major flaw for me, and makes all of the mayhem here nothing more than violence for the sake of violence.
Mike: There’s not much to dislike about Wake Up, and there’s not much of anything that could be considered “bad”, so… I mentioned that all of the kids were a bit interchangeable and that is not a very good thing. In fact, all six of the kids were hard to like which makes this a bit of an odd duck. Do we root for the activists who, depending on your political ideology, have legitimate concerns BUT are causing damage that normal 9-5ers will have to deal with, or do we root for the dude who is just doing his job (albeit with a bit more gusto than is called for)? Or do we just look at this as a nihilistic experience serving as some type of metaphor for life? I dunno, man — I just watch these things. But seriously, some people may get a bit twisted without a clear protagonist.
The Verdict
Joseph: Viewers who gravitate toward empty, meaningless, gratuitous violence with no small amount of nihilism should be more into Wake Up than I was. “No small amount of nihilism” includes the overkill of not one but three bummer scenes in the third act. The film is well acted, directed, and shot, and I have no problems with its technical aspects, so I would say that if the sort of thing I have described in the first two sentences of this paragraph is your bag, you’re going to get a kick out of the film.
Mike: Wake Up is a textbook case of $%#@ around and find out. While the plot is pretty bare bones (and I’m sure there will be some folks who point this out as a negative), and with no clear cut protagonist, it might be hard for some viewers to feel invested in the goings on, but if a good nihilistic stalk-and-slash inside of a “big box” furniture store that is chock full of traps and weapons cobbled together from household and kitchen items is the cup of tea you’ve been looking for, you’re in for a wild and memorable ride with this one.
Recommended for anyone that wanted to see Kevin McAllister protect his house with far more ferocity and less Looney Tunes.
Wake Up
Directed By: François Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell
Written By: Alberto Marini
Starring: Turlough Convery, Benny O. Arthur, Jacqueline Moré
Run Time: 1h 20m
Rating: NR
Release Date: 2024
No trailer was available as of our review date
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