When corporations fail to look out for the best interests of the common people, it’s up to activists to save the day. This is a fruitful concept that has undergone many cinematic explorations as of late, most notably in 2022’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline, which depicted a group of eco-warriors looking to pull off one combustible mission in the name of environmental awareness and social justice. Even better was Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama, a masterpiece of radical movement that found its young protagonists holing up in a closed department store following a series of perfectly executed terrorist attacks in Paris. The youths are mad as hell and they certainly aren’t going to take it anymore, and this nugget of an idea forms the basis of Wake Up, a film that centers the entirety of its action within the confines of a single, IKEA-esque furniture store. And yet, despite the promise of a ragtag team of militant protesters looking to shed light on a nefarious corporation’s ways, directors Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell — who are credited as RKSS, and are responsible for previous efforts such as Turbo Kid and Summer of 84 — demonstrate little interest in following this path, electing to go the slasher route, trapping seven friends in an unprecedented nightmare as they fight to survive the night. Wake Up wants to play deadly serious, but the film is a largely dull and confused affair, offering little to a battered and bruised subgenre.
After posting their latest call-to-action on social media, activists Ethan (Benny O. Arthur), Yasmin (Jacqueline Moré), Grace (Alessia Yoko Fontana), Tyler (Kyle Scudder), and Emily (Charlotte Stoiber) convene at House Idea, a gargantuan home goods store notorious for its hazardous effects on rainforests and climate. Joining them is timid Karim (Tom Gould), looking to make a good impression and become a permanent member of the gang. As House Idea closes for the evening, the activists tuck themselves away into the pockets of the store, ready to spring into action when nobody is around, with designs on vandalizing as much of the store as possible. Meanwhile, nighttime security guards and brothers Jack (Aidan O’Hare) and Kevin (Turlough Convery) are on patrol, clocking in for what should be an ordinary shift when they suddenly discover the activists’ presence. When both sides encounter each other, the situation inadvertently grows violent, forcing Kevin to retaliate to a horrifying degree, tapping into his own tracking skills as the activists quickly discover they are locked inside the superstore with a madman.
As we are introduced to Kevin, it’s clear that he is a deeply troubled figure, combating obvious mental illness and showing little interest in anything other than “primitive hunting,” crafting weapons out of basic tools and home appliances. His behavior has previously gotten him into some hot water at work, but brother Jack is there to vouch for him, convincing a supervisor to relegate them to the night shift for an easy night of drinking beer and monitoring cameras. When the activists disrupt their plans, all hell breaks loose, leading Kevin on a brutal rampage after blood is accidentally shed. The Whissell directors, who are handling a screenplay from Alberto Marini, have an intriguing premise to work with, hoping to mine thrills from the film’s single location and condensed time frame, but Wake Up goes about its aims quite poorly. Once the cat-and-mouse action gets going, everything plays out in dull, de facto fashion, with stabbings, beatings, and stompings leading the charge, along with the odd booby trap thrown in for good measure. A significant part of the problem lies in the activists themselves: wielding paintball guns and decked out in animal masks, they’re largely bland and indistinguishable from each other, save for Karim, who is mostly reduced to simpering cowardice. We should be cheering for their survival, if not their mission as well, but they are ultimately too insipid to let live, turning into splatter fodder for Kevin.
Net sum, then, Wake Up feels like a missed opportunity. The film has brevity on its side — end credits arrive at around the 77-minute mark — but there’s little novel or meaningful to find even so. To the Whissells’ credit, there’s one truly inspired sequence where, amidst all the mayhem, Kevin manages to douse the kids in glow-in-the-dark neon paint before killing the building’s power, forcing their glowing bodies to stumble about in the pitch blackness while Kevin prowls in the shadows. It’s an impressive and visually striking sequence in a film that needed roughly a dozen more of them to make up for the blandness elsewhere. Wake Up also suffers from strange tonal shifts — the film’s coda is an egregious punchline that should have been excised. And that’s not even the worst of it, as there’s a downright bizarre sequence that occurs when Kevin, after a prolonged period of killing and bloodletting, suddenly forces the surviving activists to assemble a new cabinet in order to replace one they damaged, which the remaining members willingly do. What the hell was that about? By the end credits, viewers will likely be asking the same of the entire project.
DIRECTOR: Anouk Whissell & Yoann-Karl Whissell; CAST: Benny O. Arthur, Turlough Convery, Charlotte Stoiber, Jacqueline Moré; DISTRIBUTOR: Blue Fox Entertainment; IN THEATERS: April 4; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 23 min.
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