For God's Sake Wake Her Up (2024) - Horror Film Review

I think that showing the concept of sleep paralysis within the confines of a horror movie has to be hard. The idea itself doesn't lend itself to images of captivating and horrific scenes. Conjuring: The Beyond and Dead Awake are two such films that come to mind; both attempted to make a film on the subject and failed. I had low expectations then for the Wayne Moreheart directed and James Howells written sleep paralysis horror For God's Sake Wake Her Up. Not without its issues, but this was leaps and bounds better than any other film I have seen on the subject.

April (Mamie Kakimoto) is a woman at the end of her tether. Nightly she is visited by what she believes to be some sort of demonic entity which causes her sleep paralysis. With both her grandmother and mother having died while in the throes of sleep paralysis, April has gone a little crazy, keeping a huge journal of her research, as well as many video diaries documenting her experiences. The woman doesn't believe she has much fight left in her, and that the entity will one time take the last of her will. 
Elsewhere, school girl Rizz (Sarah Crawford) is not dealing with the death of her mother well. Not only did she refuse to go to the funeral, but the typically good girl has ran away from home on some sort of self destructive path of sorrow. She is joined by her friend - Myles (Queen Legend), a much more street-smart girl who intends to follow Rizz to try and keep her safe. Much to Myles' concern, the pair have ended up in a rough part of the city late at night. Her pleas for reason fall on deaf ears, with the reckless Rizz seeing the open door of an old house as an invitation for her to enter and have a snoop around. Thinking the place to be uninhabited, the friends are shocked to see a woman in a state of some sort of distress in a bed in the bedroom, someone who doesn't seem aware of their presence. This is of course April, who is in perhaps the final night of her sleep paralysis nightmare. Rizz decides that helping this woman may in some way make up for her not being there for her mother during her final months, and so promises to help her. It isn't long after that the pair discover they are unable to leave the house, and that the woman's condition may not be medical in nature but supernatural.

What I liked most about For God's Sake Wake Her Up was that the focus was not on the victim, but on characters who in any other movie would have been secondary ones. By the time they arrive at April's house she is already in full sleep paralysis mode. It was neat to see characters arriving at a supernatural event that was already happening, rather than seeing the slow build-up. We are mainly giving April's story via the video diaries she left behind. We see her in the prologue, but then the action brutally cuts away to the two teenage girls, with it feeling like their story was something completely separate. The film follows them over the course of a day, with plenty placed on Rizz's shoulders, due to all the trauma she is facing at this pivotal moment in her life. I liked how the two stories joined up, with it not feeling unfeasible how they came to be at April's home.

The demonic entity (Isabel Klapwyk) was rarely shown but this really was for the best. It has a humanoid look to it, kind of an Insidious style painted face, but other than that it looked pretty normal and a little bit bland. Even mostly hidden in shadow it was hard to feel too much fear from this antagonist, and it's evil sounding voice came across as a little generic. Its powers also seemed a bit random. April was someone who had been terrorised by it for possibly months and months, and she was still holding on. But then it displays powers that extend to not only the whole house, but even the surrounding area. It is able to magically keep the doors and windows of the house shut, can drag objects and people around, and can even attack people. You could argue the reason for April still being alive was due to the entity siphoning off her life force, but spending months causing sleep paralysis to one victim seemed a long winded way of achieving that goal. April also seemed to have powers to her, able to communicate with Rizz via a broken TV, giving the girl hints on how she might be able to defeat the being. When the end does come, the final confrontation was a bit of a let-down. I will say I did enjoy the ending though, it explained previous moments in a way that I hadn't expected.

This was a very well made indie horror, the quality of the filmmaking was apparent throughout. I liked the blend of found footage (with the video diaries), and I did like the interactions between the two friends, even if I found the dialogue to be occasionally a little too wordy and stiff sounding. Despite the entity not appearing on screen until around the end of the second act, I was still engaged, finding the friend's story to be captivating even before the introduction of horror.

The antagonist may not have left much of an impression me, but the film as a whole was good, an almost great story (a few plot holes to be found), and a surprisingly good score to it that made scenes feel full of dread, even if that dread never really materialised. Some characters are done dirty here, but I did like the handful of unexpected moments that appeared, and exploring relatable grief through the lens of the supernatural worked well. For God's Sake Wake Her Up debuted on streaming platform BloodStream, via The Horror Collective; the genre label of Entertainment Squad, and comes to all major digital and on-demand platforms from December 1st.

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