Movie review - The Minute You Wake up Dead

The Minute You Wake Up Dead *** (out of 5) (R) The title looms ominously as a concept, growing in menace as this quiet, twisty suspense tale unfolds. The setting is a small Southern town. An investment broker (Cole Hauser) has done well by his fellow citizens in the past, but has just cost a whole lotta folks a whole lotta money when a huge deal he’d touted fell apart, making their funds evaporate. We see him entering the local diner to icy stares from all, and threats from a few. The hot waitress (Jaime Alexander) he’d had a crush on since their school days is the only one who is still kind to him. He’s also renting the house next door from her and her father.

Hauser keeps getting whispered anonymous phone calls using the film’s title as a threat to life and limb. He tells the sheriff (Morgan Freeman, who also provides his special brand of voice-over), but the law is helpless when the perp can’t be identified. Romance surprisingly blossoms with Alexander until her sickly father is gunned down one night. The theory is that the shooter was going for Hauser, but missed his home by one door.

That’s when a surprising number of layers begin to unfold. We learn why the old man was shot, but so do others, making a simple plan spin out of control, causing more bodies to pile up. One of my favorite Alfred Hitchcock films, The Trouble with Harry, is a wry little comedy about having to keep moving a corpse found in the woods, as everyone in a little neighborhood thinks they’re protecting someone else. This one vaguely evokes the memory of that, but without its whimsical humor. Or any other type of humor, for that matter.

The small-town setting provides a perfect backdrop for the tone of the tale, enhanced by the expected reality of everyone knowing everyone else’s business, or learning about it with little effort. Performances are solid, and Michael Mailer’s (Norman’s oldest son) direction is admirably efficient, as the script he co-wrote with Timothy Holland piles more and more problems upon the principal players. It’s a quiet little film, with the essential sex and violence elements occurring either off-camera, or visually minimized. Nothing great, but most should find this tangled web they weave a satisfactory diversion.

It’s got Morgan Freeman, folks. That’s almost a guarantee of merit on its own.

(The Minute You Wake Up Dead opens in select theaters, and is available On Demand and via digital platforms as of 11/4/22.)