I Only Came Here For the Meatballs

One of the best ways to bring some life to a predictable genre is to put the action in an unusual or rarely-used setting. Hunting teenagers in IKEA? Sign me up!

Quick Plot: A group of teenagers infiltrates House Idea (get it?), a home store that preaches environmental awareness while looting rain forests for raw materials. Their plan is to make some videos of their protest art to share it with the world. And if time allows, there's also some flirting and paintball.

Unfortunately for them, this happens to be the night that brother security guards Kevin and Jack are stuck on the overnight shift after the socially awkward, physically dominating Kevin freaked out some customers. Jack is already multiple sheets to the wind when the kids have made a full breach. Nervous about being caught drunk, he encourages Kevin to get the kids out without telling their supervisors. 

Kevin takes things a bit too far. 

See, when not lumbering around the home good section, Kevin spends most of his time watching survivalist videos and setting animal traps. He's one of those dangerous men who probably fantasizes about making it through an apocalypse in order to prove his own skills. 

The teenagers are woefully outmatched, both physically and mentally. Only Yasmin seems to have any sort of working brain cells. This is Kevin's terrain.

Wake Up is a good idea turned into a mediocre movie. Directing partners Anouk and Yoann-Karl Whissell (Turbo Kid, Summer of '84)  get a lot of fun out of their space, racing their teens around in flatbed carts as they hide in home store pockets when not being forced to assemble furniture. It's what you want from a slasher film set in this kind of location.

I wish the movie had a little more heft. The teenagers are as disposable as a bag of Swedish meatballs, with the script never treating their mission with an ounce of weight. Likewise, Kevin is basically Michael Meyers without a mask, which sounds more interesting than it plays out.

Still, it's hard to be too mad at an 83-minute slasher set in IKEA.

High Points

I wish a move set after hours in IKEA had more fun with its surroundings, but the Whissells do make some visual magic late in the film with some glow-in-the-dark body coatings that combine Predator with The Purge 

Low Points

I thought we moved past that nasty mid-2000s of [SPOILER ALERT] killing our final girl through some forgotten trap in the last minute of screentime, but I guess I forgot an eternal truth: French horror (even when part Canadian) is always mean

Lessons Learned

Corporate windows are a lot thicker than they look

Getting stabbed in the back is no excuse to not continue to run fairly quickly around a large store

Always use caution when reaching for a high shelf (this is useful advice whether you're shopping in a recent homicide site or just, you know, Costco)

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For a similar setup that takes a less slasher, more Michael Haneke-ish path, check out Bertrand Bonello's Nocturama. It's also a nihilist film about young French radicals hiding out after hours in a sprawling department store, but it's, well, good

Rent/Bury/Buy

Wake Up doesn't hit its potential, but it's a short, quick little watch that might still show you something new. It's a disappointment due to its promising setup, but I didn't feel like I wasted 83 minutes of my life. Find it on Kanopy the next time you lose a screw to your bookcase and need some way to vent.