The Wake (2017)

This is a terrible movie.*spoiler* The script is bad. It's a slasher turn demonic possession starring lifeless characters that can't put their brains together enough to escape a modern house. For example, her phone isn't charged at the beginning, but not once asked to charge it in the house. Then claims "sexist" when someone calls her out? Really? Then a guy says, there's probably no service here anyways- lazy writing.Acting is bad. The reactions are unrealistic. Guy gets stabbed and everyone stands around with hands over their mouths. WTF? The music is bad, the piano almost drowns out the dialog. The other choices are more distracting than actually adds atmosphere.The end/ reveal/ twist is dumb. You have an Asian Buddhist shrine thing going on in the house, but then goes to a Satanic basement at the end? Could have done the Christian / Catholic thing in the house and it would have worked somewhat for the end. It's confusing.It's just a bad movie. Sorry, I hate it.

THE WAKE is another familiar-looking slice of indie horror set in a single location. Five friends hook up to attend the wake of a local kid who died mysteriously. There's plenty of atmosphere building here but as you'd expect, very little in the way of actual content, at least until the climax. The plot is fairly predictable even though the actors do their best to sell it, but at least this is a little more convincing than most.

The film opens by letting us know Casey (Allie Rivera) is going to be the final girl by showing us the end clip. Her boyfriend Tyler (Bryan Brewer-writer/director/producer) had committed vehicular homicide while drunk and they are going to the kid's wake. Now why the boy was out late at night and how he was hit when he lives high up on a hill on an isolated road was not explained.While at the wake, which consists of Tyler, his friends and three family members and no one else, they get tied up with a killer in the house.Now why Tyler was not in jail was explained later that the family didn't want to press charges...which is not how that works for drunk driving involving a death. Also the wake of a stranger I killed would not be where I would be going with my friends. They did managed to find a one fingered person who could play a child's piano to do the sound track. The acting, plot and dialogue were all bad, thank you Bryan Brewer for nothing. Scary stuff consisted of the proverbial burlap masks, a blue light, and doors opening and shutting by themselves. I even saw the mother thing coming at the end. The killer was liked Batman. Once caught, it took forever to get his mask off. The build up was more comical than suspenseful.The story itself had potential: If Allie Rivera had a nose job and acting lessons, if Bryan Brewer would stay behind the camera, if they fixed the plot holes, and created some dialogue.Phone companies have batteries in their lines so if you lose power you have plenty of time to call in a power outage. You don't lose phone service right away. Just saying. Close to being "so bad it is good." F-word, No sex or nudity.

I hate having to review a film like 'The Wake' because I want so badly to like it, but have to be honest and admit that it is highly flawed. It's obvious that the people behind the camera are new to the industry and have a steep learning curve ahead of them. So some hopefully helpful advise I would give to them on this occasion would be: 1) Scrap the opening the credit sequence. I suspect it was only put there to pad the run time a little, which would be acceptable if you'd put some effort into it. Instead it may as well have been a black screen with names very slowly cropping up one by one. You certainly don't want to start your film on such a down-note as that created.2) Review the dialogue you have written. As you are writing it ask yourself whether in that actual situation anyone would say anything remotely like that. If not, go with something else. A lot of the dialogue in this film was so cringe-worthy it made for a very uncomfortable viewing experience at times.3) Make sure characters are reacting realistically to things. When there's a killer with a knife standing two metres away from a group of people, is it likely they would all just stand there calmly discussing their options? Of course not, and watching it happen in a film looks nothing short of ridiculous.4) Try to show less characters actual moment of dying. It doesn't matter how good you are at film making, it is a very difficult thing to make look realistic. Even in the 'The Dark Knight Rises' there is a particular death scene (Google it if you don't know what I'm talking about) that looks unbearably fake, and that's Christopher Nolan who was responsible for that. Proof that it is a very hard thing to get right.So there's just a few ideas to work on for the next project you endeavour yourself to. There were actually some elements of the script I kind of liked, and with just some simple (or perhaps not so) tweaks I can see you making a very enjoyable film to watch one day.