The guards are portrayed sympathetically with circumstances beyond their control. So, if you were to cheer on Convery’s carnage of the socially conscious, that is not entirely unintended. It seems that RKSS made this for both sides of this fence simultaneously, with your enjoyment of the material guaranteed despite your perspective. It is sort of like how, over the years, while rewatching Suburbia, you stop siding with the punks and start seeing the side of things of the unemployed factory workers that hunt them.
I also applaud the one major innovation to the slasher sub-genre RKSS brings to the table: having the killer remain unmasked while all the victims wear masks. That tidbit alone very nicely fed the crater where my mind once was. By complete happenstance, I had just seen Big Trouble in Little China before watching Wake Up, which showed me how an amazing pulsating electronic soundtrack can intensify already wild visuals.
“Bataller’s music locks in a frenetic momentum…”
The LSD in the fruit punch tonight is courtesy of the electrifying score by Arnau Bataller. This is the John Carpenter-level scoring that all movies should start using immediately. Bataller’s music locks in a frenetic momentum, which is more than matched by Marini’s pacing of the story. The premise appears like a pop-up out of nowhere, and suddenly, we are already right where all the action is.
It doesn’t take long for things to get bloody; it’s always a plus. We are granted some decent character development along the way so that we give a darn when they start dropping like flies. This more than clears the bloody bar set for euro-slashers by the classic Aquarius: Stagefright, with the highly stylized violence we expect from the continent. There is also an all-time great, sickening punchline in the epilogue.
Is this a condemnation of capitalist devastation or an excuse to see snowflakes cut up into little pieces? It is a corporate death burger with all of the best toppings and well worth rolling down your window for. Wake Up is the kind of senseless massacre that will bring all of us together in the end, like a Willie Nelson picnic. No matter how you slice it, this flick has a trap to catch your interest.
"…a corporate death burger with all of the best toppings..."
