Wake Up is directed by François Simard, Anouk Whissell, Yoann-Karl Whissell, and the cast includes Turlough Convery, Benny O. Arthur, Alessia Yoko Fontana, Jacqueline Moré, Kyle Scudder, Thomas Gould, Charlotte Stoiber, Aidan O'Haree.
My Thoughts On Wake Up
At first glance, Wake Up might seem like just another late night genre entry, and another mid-budget horror film with masks, blood, and teenagers making poor choices. But dig a little deeper, and what you find is a volatile, satirical mashup of environmental guilt, digital narcissism, and the kind of blue-collar rage that festers under fluorescent lighting.
The film begins with a group of Gen Z eco-activists breaking into a massive furniture megastore. They’re not looting, at least not in the traditional sense. They’re staging a protest against capitalism, against climate apathy, and against complacency. In their minds, they’re freedom fighters.
The film doesn't mock these characters outright, at least not at first. There's a kinetic energy in the way they move through the space, flipping mattresses, splashing pig’s blood, and scrawling slogans. It's activism as performance art.
Then comes the tonal shift.
Enter the night security guard. who is middle-aged, unnamed, and based on his dead-eyed stare and heavy breathing, teetering on the edge of collapse. He’s the human embodiment of wage fatigue, and this guy doesn’t just crack, he implodes. And what follows is an absurd, violent, and oddly satisfying descent into madness.
Suddenly, Wake Up isn’t a protest film, it’s a siege. A one location slasher set inside an empty monument to consumerism, where politics and panic collide in blood-streaked aisles. The guard, now unhinged, becomes a DIY horror villain, arming himself with nail guns, hardware, and righteous rage.
It’s outrageous, but intentionally so. Directors François Simard, Anouk Whissell and Yoann-Karl Whissell. lean into the absurdity with confidence, balancing social commentary with genre homage. There’s a surprising amount of visual sophistication at work, including security cam footage, phone livestreams, and tight handheld sequences, which are all stitched together in a way that feels intentionally disorienting.
Which brings us to the film’s central tension: Who, exactly, are we rooting for?
On one side, we have the activists, who are idealistic, smug, often irritating. They preach sustainability while destroying private property. Their message is real, but their methods are reckless. On the other, a working-class man who’s spent too many nights cleaning up other people’s messes, and his retaliation is horrific, but you understand the pressure cooker that created him.
In the best tradition of horror, Wake Up doesn’t offer easy answers, and it weaponizes our sympathies. It makes us flinch not just at the violence, but at the uncomfortable recognition that both sides are, in some way, right, yet also terribly and dangerously wrong.
There's a locked-in tension to the film that never quite lets up. Every corner of the store becomes a trap. Every decision the characters make is tinged with desperation. And yet, for all its panic and pacing, Wake Up never loses its sense of humor.
There are moments which are blink-and-you-miss-it moments, where the absurdity of it all peeks through. It’s horror, but dressed in retail drag, but the film also understands that horror doesn’t work without structure.
The lighting is claustrophobic, often flickering, like the power’s about to go out both literally and metaphorically. The sound design is sharp and aggressive, driven by a soundtrack that veers between club bangers and ambient dread, and it’s the kind of movie that hits you in the chest, whether you want it to or not.
There’s nothing subtle about Wake Up. It’s loud, messy, and confrontational, but beneath the blood and bed frames is something sincere, a portrait of generational miscommunication. Of activism losing itself in aesthetics. Of labor reaching a breaking point. And yes, of the bizarre, brutal poetry that happens when a security guard goes full John Wick on a group of teenagers shouting into their phones.
Wake Up doesn't seem to have been reviewed very well, but I enjoyed it, and while it won’t change the world, and is full of predictable tropes, it might change the way you walk through a furniture store. It’s stylish, self-aware, and slyly political, and a horror film that screams, but knows exactly what it’s screaming about.