Frightfest Glasgow 2024: ‘Wake Up’ Review
Stars: Turlough Convery, Benny O. Arthur, Jacqueline Moré, Tom Gould, Alessia Yoko Fontana, Kyle Scudder | Written by Alberto Marini | Directed by François Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell
From RKSS, the directorial collective behind Turbo Kid, Summer of 84 and We Are Zombies, comes Wake Up, which sees a group of young activists set out to make a political statement by vandalising a home superstore as it closes. But their plan goes terribly wrong when they become trapped inside and must face a deranged security guard with a gruesome passion for primitive hunting. As the night fills with violence and terror, a desperate fight for their lives begins.
Very similar to last year’s Glasgow Frightfest film Hunt Her Kill Her, which saw a woman hunted in a store overnight, Wake Up sees a group of Gen Z activists looking to make a statement about the practices of “House Idea” a fictional furniture warehouse business (based very loosely on a more famous international Scandi brand) by invading their store overnight and defacing it with their “Wake Up” motto. Both films are, at heart, home invasion films but on a grander scale – and in this case, the home that’s being invaded has occupants who are willing to fight back!
From the get-go Wake Up felt VERY Home Alone-esque, from the kids running loose around thew store all alone, cracking out paint guns and turning a dangerous situation in for AND in the excessive use of traps and spring-loaded devices by the film’s antagonist but… and here’s where they script excelled, it was clearly explained that he’s a man who spent his time hunting – he SHOULD be well-versed in traps given his love of the “sport”.
Speaking of hunting, the film draws some interesting parallels between the kids looking to make a statement about the environmental impact of big business through anarchic actions and the fact their hunter WAS all about the environment – hunting, making weapons out of natural resources etc. They both “care” about the environment in different ways. VERY different ways.
Whilst, for the most part, Wake Up sicks to the traditional tropes and cliches of this kind of genre film – mixing home invasion tropes with slasher movie cliches, there were some surprising flourishes scattered throughout the film. A particular high point sees the killer security guard covering the Gen z’ers in black light paint at one point – which immediately subverted the trope of the killer turning out the lights (typically shot either in pitch black or with too much light to be “pitch black”) making it much more interesting… and seeing the killer pull his paint-clad victims into the dark was (brilliantly) visually stunning.
**** 4/5
Wake Up screened on Friday, March 8th as part of this year’s Pigeon Shrine Glasgow Frightfest.
