Wake Up is a 2019 horror film about a psychiatric doctor who researches a young girl’s diary to find out why she murdered her entire family.
Sleep, lack thereof, or dreams within, have been horror fodder since, well, probably a caveman ughed out his first telling of a nightmare he had to a friend over a campfire. At the movies, they are part and parcel to the genre with a near countless heap of titles that use the ‘mysteries’ of sleep and all associated with it as tent poles for all kinds of sometimes clever and entertaining yarns.
The latest in the lot is this independent release from debut filmmaker Joe W Nowland, tackling insomnia and its creepy effects on a teen girl. It’s a clever story, if a little on point, that finds its footing more often than not in serving up exactly what it intends.
Beginning in a middle American Norman Rockwellian home, the Goldman’s welcome back their eldest son (Ray Dwyer Jr.), enjoying a happy meal and conversation, though something seems a little off with daughter Molly (Kelly Frances Fischer). That’s confirmed when all go to sleep before Molly emerges from her darkened bedroom, hammer in hand. She kills them all, including the dog, and is found naked on her brother, her own attempts to end her life failed. Two years later, in a psych ward, she succeeds and now psychiatrist Philip Tanner (Scott Broughton) is called in to read her diary and discover why she committed the murders and took her own life. Too bad he ignores the warning of a curse written on the first page. Curses, shmurses.
Insomnia often gets a bad rap when it comes to the movies. Think of The Machinist or Taxi Driver or even Christopher Nolan‘s aptly named Insomnia. These are stories of madmen and murderers and lapses in sanity. Seems without a proper night’s sleep, one goes right off the rails. With Nowland’s Wake Up, we’re swimming in familiar waters, though isn’t lesser for it. Supernatural wonderments abound and questions of real or unreal keep it ticking along, the story often more a kind of crime thriller than typical ghost in the dark spook-a-thon.
While it has more than its share of obvious jumpscares that must be some sort of contractual obligation in movies like this, there are better things here that help keep it on track, that being the mystery of why Molly did as she did than the haunting she commits to in making it clear. Thankfully, Nowland puts more emphasis on this angle of his story than the transparent ghosting and it’s the right choice, the best parts of his direction threading the evidence of why and how the crime came to be, the visions of Molly having far better significance the more the film progresses, revealing that Nowland had a smarter plan from the start than we might first have suspected. Wake up, indeed. It’s just a little too bad it doesn’t quite have the impact some realists (like myself) might be hoping for. All others will be well satisfied.
With smaller budget releases there are of course limitations, and certainly Nowland (who appears briefly in the film as well) is juggling what he can with what he’s given. A few wooden performances strip a bit of the authenticity but ultimately, there is enough depth in the few twists, ambiguity in the doubts of dreams or reality, and a strong finish to merit this a watch. Recommended.