Mark Reviews Movies: THE MINUTE YOU WAKE UP DEAD

The Minute You Wake up Dead, Lionsgate Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 3, 2022

The plot of The Minute You Wake up Dead is driven primarily by the incompetence of its characters. There are plenty of alleged twists, based on a number of betrayals and hidden motives, in the screenplay by director Michael Mailer and Timothy Holland, but not a one of them seems logical or possible—unless one takes into account that everyone in the movie is incapable of basic logical thinking.

The setting is a small town somewhere in the South, where stock expert Russ (Cole Hauser) has just lost a lot of people a lot of money by recommending a bad investment. Even the local Sheriff, named Fowler (Morgan Freeman), isn't too happy with the guy, since the lawman's brother lost his retirement fund in the deal, and that becomes a problem for Russ when he starts receiving anonymous, threatening phone calls (The script goes out of its way to make a catch-phrase out of the running threat: "Where will you be the minute you wake up dead?").

Meanwhile, Russ starts a fling with local long-timer Delaine (Jaimie Alexander), formerly the most popular girl in high school, who works as a waitress at the local diner while tending to her aging, ailing father. Russ rents the house next door, and when Delaine's father is murdered, Russ is convinced the killer simply mistook one house for the other.

Mailer and Holland seem to play their hand quickly, as we learn the identity of the murderer, his motive, and who's actually behind it all almost as soon as the wrong man is killed. That seems like a daring move, as well as an intrinsic promise that whatever is happening here is far more intriguing than the central mystery.

Instead, the killer and the person who hired him keep making error after error. Some of those mistakes are kept secret until later, technically making them surprise twists but really just reminding us about the extent of their incompetence. Not even the Sheriff, who has the obvious murder plot figured out because it's so obvious, has a lick of common sense. Then again, how can his silence about his conclusions be a problem if the case is as easy to solve as he makes it out to be?

The whole thing is one piece of inconsistent plotting and one act of unbelievable ineptitude (Someone hides a body in such a way that it would be impossible not to notice it, and another character drives around a victim's car as if no one will notice) after another. The Minute You Wake up Dead tries to add the laughable angle of a morality play into the mix, but by the time the heavy-handed final narration arrives, one will probably be too busy with one's favorite expression of disbelief at how simply, quickly, and foolishly the plot resolves to care too much.

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