Let’s cast our eyes back to 2016’s Wake in Fear, a nifty abduction shocker starring Caitlin Stasey (All Cheerleader’s Die) and Markus Taylor (Deadheads). The début feature film from Dylan K. Narang, Wake in Fear is a surprising blend of contemporary horror ideas split across two simultaneously running storylines, one following an abducted girl, the other a troubled man desperate for work.
Originally titled All I Need, you can see why the film went under the radar. From the outside, it looks like your average grimy exploitation thriller. The so-called torture porn subgenre was a relatively brief bubble. It started with Hostel, hit peak gross with A Serbian Film in 2010, and from there, drifted out of the spotlight. Once it was defined by its biggest hits, it went the way of found footage and became a tough place to carve new ground.
Narang clearly had his eyes on that new ground and pretty much picked a perfect time to release. For most of the crew, and Narang himself, this was their first feature and a decent place to prove their skills. Think about the most significant horror films of 2015, movies like The Witch and It Follows, and how they shifted the bar. Horror has been reinvigorated over the past few years to the point where audiences aren’t starved of solid A-grade scares and high-quality production. Monsters and our expectations of them have also changed. We demand smart new stories or at least savvy reiterations of classic themes as modern threats.
In the modern horror landscape, there’s little room for run-of-the-mill features or retro-stupidity. We like our ‘80s nostalgia and shameless old-school schlock, but they need to be savvy, sharp, a few steps ahead of an audience eternally ready to scream ‘I’ve seen that before!’ Wake in Fear delivers an underdog punch a lot of subgenre enthusiasts could really appreciate, and plenty of thrills to keep you on edge throughout.
Killing Her Softly
So 2015 introduced us to new threats, and 2016 continued the trend with bold new voices in Indie filmmaking singing out loud and proud, boasting fresh-faced ways to give us nightmares. And though Wake in Fear doesn’t exactly crack the mould, it does offer smart thrills for folks jaded with the relentless nihilism and gore-centric thrills of torture porn.
One of the first things that really hit home when settling into Wake in Fear is how slow and steady it is. The film opens in darkness then slowly picks out the dozed, waking eyes of Chloe. It’s an intimate introduction carried by some incredibly tight shots and wide, startled eyes; we glimpse her skewed view, the camera pulls back to reveal her gagged mouth. Sure, opening the film with an eye isn’t exactly groundbreaking, but it actually serves a real purpose and nicely sets up the film’s more intimate introverted approach to some pretty extroverted stuff. It’s a smart way to totally disarm the audience and put them in the same position as Chloe.
As she comes around, she realises she’s not alone, the small room is crammed with unconscious young women in their underwear, bound and gagged. She starts communicating with the girl next to her and the conversation, entirely through eye movement, is pretty disturbing. The killer arrives, yanks her off to the bathroom, and Chloe is left to hear the muffled violence next door. Soon after, the girl’s bloody body is dragged out and away. These moments are brief and never clear. The scares are often more sensory than they are visual, with sound playing a huge part in the films scares, much as Don’t Breathe would utilise later that same year.
Narang always goes for these details over the sheer nastiness. It’s one of Wake in Fear‘s greatest strengths: its ability to refrain. While the hits of torture porn got their rocks off via gross-out practical effects, exploitative sexualisation, and shameless degradation; Wake in Fear plays a different game. Sure, there’s shocks and twists, but the specific violence is never really spelt out. Even when Chloe is caught by the killer, she is befuddlingly thrown back into the room, it’s a head-scratcher that makes the scenario even more mysterious. There’s no teeth-pulling or hair-burning, just bloody-aftermaths and glimpsed corpses. The shock of a body suddenly whisked off into the bathroom hits harder than the film’s gorier moments later on. And it definitely has them.
One of the most intense sequences follows Chloe as she investigates the blood-soaked dingy bathroom; the music drops, and the stark, wide camera shot lets our imaginations combine the scene with the screams heard earlier. She spots an earring in the drain and freaks the hell out. It’s chilling and does more than the shameless hacking of scantily clad bodies ever could.
When you look at the synopsis or even the original poster, expectations could be high for something pretty unrelenting. Narang knows that audiences have seen everything by now and without a decent practical effects crew, there’s no point going for gore. So much more can be done with a decent sound designer and a great lead, of which he clearly has both. So, even if he indulges in the pitfall of tropes, he’s often able to dig right under us and turn an eye-roll into a smile. There’s nothing more pleasing than having your expectations smashed when it comes to horror.
You might think that the secondary narrative is there to placate a dull single-set horror film but, rest assured, Wake in Fear fully exploits its boundaries; every movement, be it the creak of a floorboard or the rattle of a doorknob carries so much weight. Barricading the door against the sequential serial killer seems a smart idea, but we know it will make a racket. So much of the film exploits the hide and seek mentality to perfection, keeping you on the edge of your seat and popping you into Chloe’s point of view when you least want it. A racy attempt at escape sees Chloe and another girl attempt to flee via the air ducts. What ensues is the only truly graphic – perhaps bordering on daft – bit of bloodletting. Chloe, in a desperate attempt to throw the killer off and prove she has crawled to her death, crams her fingers inside one of her wounds so that the blood will drip down from the vent. It’s an odd plan, and the reasoning doesn’t seem altogether sound, but it’s the only shameless bit of torture in the whole film so it could be forgiven for its stupidity. It’s also carried perfectly by the film’s lead.
First and foremost, this is Caitlin Stasey’s film. From literally the first frames to the very last, she is such a great performer and easily carries many of the film’s highs and lows. The young actor has barely any dialogue and yet from that opening shot, we’re sold. She’s tough, smart, and inventive: three qualities that go hand-in-hand when it comes to dealing with psychopathic horror movie threats. And for the record, Wake in Fear has one of the most perfect heroine revenge moments we’ve seen in ages, a drop-dead perfect final twist in Narang’s cat and mouse game that you won’t see coming. But again, it is another one of those moments that prove a bit outlandish when considered alongside the rest of the film, but so deliciously dark one can’t help but laugh.
All I Need
Stepping aside from the trapped-in-a-room narrative, Wake in Fear has a whole other story to offer. Andrew (Taylor), is a troubled man who receives a mysterious call offering him work as a courier. Since he’s unemployed and desperately trying to keep up with child welfare payments, he takes the job, and things slowly get grimmer from there. If Chloe’s story takes inspiration from films like Captivity, then Andrew’s side lifts from things like 13 Game of Death and its American remake 13 Sins, though tamer and with a better resolution. It’s the story of a disenfranchised white American man, unable to find work, unable to support a family, and preyed upon by a mysterious organisation. It’s a story we’ve seen a hundred times and pales in comparison to the adrenaline rush of Chloe’s story, but it does build to something pretty interesting.
The unassuming plain packages he carts for an unseen boss are purely MacGuffins; narrative bait placed to prove and illustrate Andrew’s mindless desperation to care for his daughter. He gets ridiculous sums of money for taking ‘books’ around town until a new, shadier offer comes up. You get the gist of what Narang is doing fairly early on, and kudos to him for pulling it off so intriguingly. What starts out as a potential exploitation film, becomes a nicely layered postmodern cat and mouse flick with some scathing social commentary tacked on for good measure. As one half of the film plots Chloe’s struggles captured, the other reveals Andrew’s slow corruption under the system. Usually, it would be an issue, ramping up the tension in a dingy Hostel environment, only to slam on the brakes for a somewhat bleak rags-to-riches story. But the innate intrigue proves a potent hook leading to a great final act.
Like any great horror movie, the film doesn’t exactly resolve. By the time we reach that third act, with a morally precarious Andrew and exhausted blood-spattered Chloe, the film changes again. Chloe decides to face off against her assailant, while Andrew finally meets his shadowy employer for a sit-down chat. Exposition can suck, but the yarn spun by Holly Twyford’s Elizabeth, the wealthy grieving widow of a dead war veteran, is exquisitely left-field. Her reasoning is bonkers and Narang’s finale positions the film as a post-Iraq class-commentary take on common contemporary themes. If anything, the title change could be an attempt to distract from Andrew’s storyline, since the original title is entirely bound to his narrative. All I Need is part of Elizabeth’s mantra, her way of persuading people to take on the very particular, and peculiar, role she requires. Again, we don’t want to give too much away, but the reasoning for this whole scenario is a hoot, one that might even stray too far into camp sensibilities Narang flirts with a couple of times.
The killer’s mask, for instance, doesn’t feel like the sleek or creepy kind of thing we’ve been treated to in films like Sinister or The Collector, it’s a big cumbersome scarecrow/gasmask thing that reeks of ‘80s slasher excess – think along the lines of My Bloody Valentine. It’s daft when you really think about it, but keeping the camera on the killer’s legs is a nifty way around this for most of the film.
The most recent poster and the new title have a retro vibe to them, so inevitably highlights the ‘80s influence more clearly. It looks like someone doesn’t quite know how to sell Wake in Fear. It has brief nods to past styles but is very much a cocktail of modern concepts. It might be that it’s too ambitious for its own good, desperately conjoining ideas to provide fresh experiences, while also indulging in some hokier moments that throw it off. But then, it could just be that this is a Russian Doll of a film. The killer is wearing the costume of ‘80s horror, in the same way, you could say this is a conspiracy thriller wearing the costume of a serial killer thriller.
Basically, what we’re saying is this film is a surprisingly on-the-ball offering. By the climax, it’s a remarkably ambitious film which cleverly undermines torture porn, exploitation, and stalk-n-slash tropes, while delivering a genuinely emotional story. It’s not a surprise it went under the radar, low-budget horror films are ten-a-penny, and it takes something truly special or truly ridiculous to get noticed. Wake in Fear is neither, but it is a solid thrill ride made with ambition and a fresh approach to tired ideas, and that doesn’t happen often enough.
WAKE IN FEAR screens on Horror Channel. Sky 317, Virgin 149, Freeview 70, Freesat 138.
