Wake Up: The Horror of Political Extremism

Michael Moore and the so-called Yes Men are great at humiliating security guards and receptionists and then pretending they are champions of the “little guy.” These Gen Z extremist thugs clearly follow their example. The plan is to hide in an Ikea-like big box store, to deface it after the sales staff leaves. Obviously, they expect to leave the security guards holding the bag for their tantrum. Instead, they learn actions sometimes have brutal consequences in the new horror movie from Francois Simard, Anouk Whissel, and Yoann-Karl Whissel (a.k.a. RKSS, the Roadkill Superstars), Wake Up, which releases this Friday in theaters.

Supposedly, Ethan’s gang of vandals is upset at the retail chain because its save-the-rainforest product line is not saving the rainforest with sufficient speed, or something like that. The plan is to spray paint their empty slogan “wake up” over all the store’s furniture. Unbeknownst to them, security guard brothers Jack and Kevin have already had a bad day. To keep their jobs, they agreed to work the late every night for the foreseeable future, starting tonight. That means Kevin must miss his special primitive hunting getaway. For his part, the more stable Jack is already drunk.

Tragically, Jack’s confrontation with the intruder’s results in a profusely gushing head wound. Rather understandably, Kevin does not take kindly to punk kids killing his brother, regardless of their politics, so uses his hunting and trapping skills to exact some bloody, merciless payback.

Frankly, Wake Up is the kind of movie in which everyone basically has it coming, so viewers should just do their best to enjoy the carnage. It will get bloody. The entitled posturing might sound 2020’s, but the hacking and slashing definitely harkens back to the 1980’s. Yet, in a way, it sometimes feels like a grubby, less ambition cousin to Bertrand Bonello’s Nocturama.

It is hard to judge whether screenwriters Alberto Marini and Martin Soudan intended to play political favorites, but RKSS invite sympathy for nobody. These are all a group of horrible people, locked in together overnight, resulting in a recipe for anxiety and disaster.

The problem is the cast and the characters they play are all very generic. Frankly, even as horror movie stereotypes, they are not very extreme. In fact, they are kind of boring. Generally speaking, boring is bad for horror movies. Perhaps the most memorable work comes from Aidan O’Hare as the hard-drinking but comparatively decent (by the film’s low, low standards) Jack.

Wake Up lacks the distinctive world-building of their previous films, Turbo Kid and Summer of ’84, but there is a subversive “I hate you all” attitude that helps set it apart. Okay, but not nearly as much fun as their prior work, Wake Up releases this Friday (4/4) in theaters.