Wake (2024) Horror Film Review

Wake is an American horror film about a young actress, Lake Reed (Fivel Stewart), who is desperate to land the leading role in an upcoming remake of a classic movie called Wake. Despite her lofty ambitions, her hopes of wowing the producers are slim. Lake has such poor acting skills her agent is considering dumping her.

Taking a proactive attitude, she breaks into the home of the star of the original film, Corin Abel (Susan Reno), and, posing as a reporter, manages to get her to give her an interview, much to the annoyance of Corine’s housekeeper and carer, Tabitha (Sarab Kamoo), who thought she had already successfully got rid of their intruder.

However, Corin soon sees through the deception and gets Lake to admit to the real reason for her visit—she wants Corin to call the studio and pull some strings.

Now confined to a wheelchair and living the life of a recluse, Corin lacks the necessary contacts. Nor does she have any interest in helping Lake gain an unfair advantage over all the other actresses auditioning for the part.

Instead, Corin says she will help Lake in a different way by teaching her the technique she used to land the role of Theodora in the original film.

This is no small thing because Corin’s audition was so good she landed the role straight away, beating 1,000 actresses with her three-minute monologue.

Lake takes up the offer but discovers the technique will require her to reach deep inside, find her darkest moment and use her fears and emotions to bring extra life to her theatrical performance. She isn’t keen to face her demons in this way, or to share them—even with someone who initially appears to be a kindly benefactor.

Little by little, Lake begins to believe there may be something sinister going on in the house and finds evidence that a missing writer visited Corin shortly before her disappearance.

Wake is not a great film. It’s hard to like any of the characters and is so slow-moving that much of the time it’s difficult to resist the temptation to skip forward.

Although she has the lead role in the film, Stewart does not come across as well as Reno and Kamoo, whose characters are more believable. In this three-horse race, Stewart struggles to keep up. However, she can only work with the script that she’s given and this one isn’t not that good.

For example, would anyone really break into someone’s home just to ask a stranger to start pulling some Hollywood strings? It doesn’t seem likely.

In addition to being slow-moving, some of the scenes are uncomfortable and annoying. I found it particularly hard to watch the scene where Lake starts poking around through Corine’s things, even going so far as to try out her hairbrush.

Annoying as it is, the scene serves a purpose because it’s while Lake is opening drawers and looking through Cornine’s possessions that she finds a small tape recorder that used to belong to the missing writer, who allegedly never turned up at Corine’s house to conduct the interview. The machine says differently and also reveals that, like Lake, the other girl, had some strange experiences on the property and believed it may hold sinister secrets.

However, there are any number of alternative ways the scriptwriters could have got the tape recorder into Lake’s hands.

To my mind, Reno is the true star of the movie. Some of her scenes are very powerful and, when the film starts plodding its way towards the predictable conclusion she keeps getting better and better.

Despite any redeeming features Wake may have, it’s not a film I want to watch again. Nor is it one that I can recommend, there are too many superior options to watch instead. I suggest The Skeleton Key (2005), which has certain similarities and is a much better film all around.