The makers of the indie psychodrama Wake share Hollywood pedigrees, which means the film has confidence, if nothing else. Director Henry LeRoy Finch and his producer-wife Susan Landau Finch (daughter of Martin Landau, who has a bit part in Wake) both worked for Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope, where they apparently learned that craft doesn't have to cost a lot of money. Wake has a dreamy style and a surprisingly soft, golden glow for a movie shot on digital video, and Finch, whose background is in sound design, creates an enveloping mix of atmospheric music and incidental effects. He does okay with actors, too: The cast of moonlighting TV players and regional-theater stars is lively, and they almost wear their dirtball hairstyles and thrift-store outfits credibly.
But that's a significant "almost." Looking to concoct a stifling family drama in the mold of Eugene O'Neill and Sam Shepard, Finch goes slumming to an absurd degree. Gale Harold, Blake Gibbons, Dihlon McManne, and John Winthrop Philbrick play brothers who get drunk and pick at each other on the night that Harold and McManne have decided to euthanize their ailing mother and Gibbons and Philbrick have decided to skip town with some ill-gotten money. The brothers rattle around in sweaty work clothes and wave guns at each other, while occasionally pawing at the two half-dressed strippers whom Philbrick has brought into their big family house. Between the wrestling matches and vomiting, the boys shout at each other about the legacy of their abusive father.
Wake seems sort of Stephen King-like at times, and not just because it takes place in Maine. The movie is book-ended by narration from Landau as the senior version of McManne, reading from a novel he's written about that woozy night, and his portentous tone matches King's recurring theme of youthful pain and anger surviving well past its use-by date. But in Wake, the situation plays out in a haze of shouting and debauchery so excessive that it becomes silly. The movie looks great and sounds great—apart from what the people in it do and say.