Wake Up

House Idea, a kind of retail superstore similar to Costco or IKEA, is targeted by six young activists to protest the animal cruelty in making the furniture sold in their store. They enter the store right before closing, hide until all the doors are locked and the customers are sent home, and then trash the place with animal blood and spray paint.

Kevin (Turlough Convery) is a security guard recently put on the night shift with his brother Jack (Aidan O’Hare). Kevin nearly lost his job after losing his temper with unruly customers. The night shift is his last chance to prove he doesn’t deserve to be fired.

After discovering the vandalism the activists left behind, Kevin and Jack confront them. However, a brutal accident sends Kevin over the edge. With Kevin no longer worried about losing his job, he begins hunting the activists and killing them one by one. Their only chance is to try and survive until the store opens in the morning.

From Canadian directors Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell also known as RKSS (Turbo Kid, Summer of ’84, We Are Zombies), Wake Up feels like a drama strewn together by a few moments of horror.

The film focuses more on Kevin struggling to keep his job while Jack succumbs to his vices while trying to keep Kevin in check. It also devotes an unbelievable amount of time to the activists destroying the store. The problem is they’re all stupid, boring, and forgettable.

Wake Up was written by Alberto Marini based on an original idea by Martin Soudan, but the problem is none of these activists have any depth. Some of them want to screw each other and many of them come from wealthy families, but they mostly come off as intolerable brats.

During their mission, even after the film you don’t know what they were trying to do besides trash everything, you’d think they’d try to be somewhat stealthy. Ideally, you would try to get in, vandalize to your heart’s content, and get out before anyone notices. These a-holes stop 20 minutes i...