Miguel Urrutia

(In French, On Cable TV, April 2021) At this point, I’m not even complaining whenever I see another film riffing on closed time loops à la Groundhog Day: I now embrace the subgenre and actively seek out any new example I can find. Wake up and Die takes a very horror-centric approach to the idea: what if a woman woke up to another man, obviously after a one-night stand, only to be killed by him… and wake up in the same situation? Admittedly, this doesn’t make for a very lengthy time loop, so the initial interest of the film is in seeing how this can be stretched to fill a full feature-length film. There is, to be fair, some distinctiveness to the result: The film doesn’t mess around in terms of violence (she’s killed three times in the first fifteen minutes) nor sex and nudity, as the film’s two sole actors spend much of the time nude and/or having sex. Writer-director Miguel Urrutia goes for style in an attempt to keep things visually interesting, and there’s something to be said for a made-in-Colombia film (I would have a really hard time even telling you about another Colombian film.). Unfortunately, being distinctive is not quite the same thing as being good, and once the novelty of the concept wears off, the film seems to have trouble deciding where to go, especially in resolving the inherently exploitative starting point. This arguably could have been better as an anthology segment than a full-length film, especially with the ending that it ends up choosing, not quite as good as the premise. The stylish approach is often more showy than evocative, and the film’s arthouse sympathies are not always in-line with what would best suit a strong narrative. While it’s true that I’d rather settle for imperfect distinction rather than dull mediocrity, there’s something missing from Wake up and Die that prevents it from being as good as it could have been.