My notes on Wake Up
Though it has a mildly trendy eco-activist/vandalism aspect, this follow-up to Turbo Kid from the RKSS Collective (Francois Simant, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell) is very much on the pattern of 1980s exploitation – with particular echoes of The Initiation and Dangerous Game. A mixed bag of six activists – ranging from true believer to poser via guy who’s only here to impress a girl – hide in IDEA, a supposedly green furniture store (get it?), after closing to film themselves in masks vandalising the place and also playing paintball – because the store uses rainforest wood in its products. However, this is the night that short-fused hulk Kevin (Turlough Convery), whose hobby is hunting with improvised primitive weapons, has to take the night shift with his heavy-drinking brother (Aidan O’Hare) to avoid getting fired. A confrontation goes wrong quickly and the brother is injured, prompting Kevin to kill a girl and then to hunt the rest down with booby traps and brute force.
Some situations are ingenious – Kevin douses a bunch of the invaders in luminous paint and tracks them in the dark – and character bytes reveal everyone is pretty shallow. Despite a young cast (Benny O. Arthur, Alessia Yoko Fontana, Tom Gould, Jacqueline Moré, Kyle Scudder, Charlotte Stoiber) doing their best to differentiate the meddling kids, they’re all fairly deserving of death so this offers more spectacle than suspense. Convery seesaws between caveman thug – he’s a big bearlike bloke – and Saw-type whispered threats over the p.a. as kids advance into his jury-rigged traps. There’s a cynical, wicked punchline. Written by Alberto Marini (Summer Camp, Romasanta).
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