Slashers have made a comeback in recent years, with offerings like Thanksgiving, Heart Eyes, the return of the Scream franchise, and the Terrifier trilogy. Now comes a newer slasher that’s not quite like the rest. Wake Up, directed by Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell (who previously teamed up for Summer of 84). Wake Up is about a group of young animal activists who invade a store at night to vandalize it for their cause, only to encounter a giant psychotic security guard named Kevin (Turlough Convery). What follows is your standard stalk-and-slash, with Kevin out to eliminate those who have invaded the store he protects. At a mere 80 minutes long, Wake Up mostly plays it safe, resulting in a horror movie that’s fun without being scary, but then comes the last five minutes. Wake Up suddenly, er, wakes up with a shocking ending. For the most part, it’s not that memorable of a movie, but you won’t forget the final scenes.
What Is ‘Wake Up’ About?

There are two stories in Wake Up, and they will collide in deadly fashion. The first revolves around six young friends who are animal rights activists. When we meet them, they are walking into a store just before closing time. Once inside, they hide, waiting for everyone to leave. After the store has officially closed, they emerge to vandalize the place, spray-painting the furniture and floors, and even taking out a bag of animal blood they got from the butcher, which they then dump into a toilet display. As they do this, they record themselves on their phones, denouncing the store’s products for leading to animals being killed in the Amazon rainforest. They are all part of a group chat where they can warn each other about any potential danger, but they quickly let their guard down and decide to break out paintball guns, making everything around them the target.
The kids do all of this while two security guards are at another end of the store. One is a trope we’ve all seen before: a middle-aged man named Jack (Aidan O’Hare) who doesn’t really care about his job but just wants to drink on the job and do as little as possible. The only thing Jack seems to care about is the other guard, his brother Kevin, a hulk of a man who is one bad night from losing his mind and taking it out on everyone else. The first time we see him, he’s outside building his own trap to kill a mouse. Next, he’s being yelled at and called horrible names by his boss for a violent encounter he had with an unruly customer. Jack saves him from being fired, but Kevin sweats with rage. He spends his time in the break room making homemade weapons and watching primitive hunting videos. His brother gives him shit for it, but the moment Kevin sees the activists inside the store, we know he has just found an outlet for the hatred burning up inside him.
It’s Hard to Root for the Heroes in ‘Wake Up’

Slashers taking place in a closed store at night have been done before. Scott Spiegel’s Intruder from 1989 comes to mind, but what all of those 80s slashers had in common is that there was a definitive line between who were the good guys and who was the bad guy. Even when slasher victims were badly written cannon fodder who just had sex and got high before their death scenes, we still knew they shouldn’t die, even if we cared so little for them that we found ourselves rooting for Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers. That’s a trap Wake Up falls into. We know absolutely nothing about the six protagonists except that they are vandals. There is no reason to sympathize with them unless you support that form of protest. They could all be interchangable with anyone else except for maybe Karim (Tom Gould), the new one in the group who is scared instead of cocky like the others.
Our heroes aren’t your usual sex-having, drug-doing protagonists, but they still don’t feel like real people. They’re mean, and they constantly put themselves in harm’s way for the plot’s sake. They know there are guards in the store, but they don’t care. Why would they think they could run through a store, making tons of noise, and it wouldn’t draw attention? When it does draw the attention of the guards, and they have to break out their phones to warn each other, the plan they agreed to suddenly goes out the window as they fail to check their texts or refuse to take the message they get seriously.

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Kevin is for sure the villain, and he’s written to be one. If he’s killing an animal in his first scene, we’re bluntly being told that this is a bad dude, and we must fear what he’s capable of. Still, he’s also sympathetic. When his boss calls him names, including breaking out the r-word, Kevin is angry, but he shrinks away like a bullied child. If he lived in Texas and liked eating people, this could be the origin story for Leatherface. In the beginning, Kevin is just doing his job when he encounters the activists, but when one of them accidentally hurts Jack, whatever sanity he had left falls away, and he begins killing the kids one by one. We know he shouldn’t, but at the same time, we almost can’t blame him. They brought it on themselves. That’s a nice way to shake things up, but it also makes it impossible for us to care about those we’re supposed to cheer for. We can’t be scared if we’re not scared for the characters involved.
‘Wake Up’ Is a Mild Thriller With a Horrific Finale

Image via Blue Fox Entertainment

That’s a flawed approach for Wake Up, but also a refreshing one that shakes up the usual final girl and final boy tropes. Something more could have been done with that if everything around Wake Up wasn’t so tame. Kevin is a scary, intimidating man, but he’s in a movie with little blood and a non-threatening techno score. This makes Wake Up come across more as a psychological thriller than an edgy slasher movie. Kevin loves to build his traps like he’s a grown-up Kevin Callister from Home Alone who has some serious PTSD from his previous encounters. The traps he creates are intriguing, but more than once, a character is captured only for there to be little blood and for them to survive the impossible. When a guy takes a spear to the back, then walks around like normal for the rest of the movie, as if nothing happened, you can kiss the tension goodbye. There is one creepy moment, though, where Kevin turns out the lights and then pours glow-in-the-dark paint on his victims. As he tells one victim, “We are all animals, and you’re in my hunting ground.” That’s a great line, but Wake Up doesn’t do a lot to make us feel that, instead choosing to play it safe.
Then came the last five minutes. Wake Up is a fun but lukewarm paint-by-numbers little horror movie for the first 75 minutes. Kevin might be mean, and so are our supposed heroes at times, but the movie itself isn’t, resulting in little bite. It turns out that they were just saving the bite for the end, because in the last few minutes Wake Up sinks its teeth in deep with lots of blood, some shocking moments, and an ending they had seemed too lazy to go for. The last shot in particular will either make you scream, laugh, or both. Wake Up is a fun little movie, but it would have been even better if it had woken up earlier and been the same film in the first 99% as it was in the last seconds.

Wake Up

Wake Up is a fun slasher that plays it safe until its brutal and shocking ending.

Release Date

May 8, 2024

Runtime

80 minutes

Director

Anouk Whissell, François Simard

Writers

Alberto Marini

Pros & Cons

The store setting creates an atmosphere with lots of possibilities.
Kevin is a terrifying man even before he goes on a killing spree.
The jolt of an ending will get your attention.

Unlikable characters take away the tension.
The chase scenes are played too safe.
The techno score doesn’t add much to the plot.