From Omeleto.
Two nurses work amid a hurricane.
WAKE is used with permission from Sean Carter. Learn more at http://seancarter.net.
Tina and Emma are two nurses working one stormy night. They are among the last staff remaining at work, as a hurricane rages outside. With the weather getting worse by the minute, they’re rushing to get one last job before evacuating: stow the "dead on arrival" corpse of a young woman in the downstairs morgue before the building floods.
But as the nurses prepare the body, they discover strange elements and features that make it hard to take care of quickly. As the storm rages on, the corpse quickly reveals itself to be more than it seems.
Directed and written by Sean Carter, this horror short has an almost classical sense of the chilling and ghastly. It’s resplendent with thrills and dread, deploying its confident sense of craftmanship and sure-handed storytelling to tell a tale of things that go bump in the tumultuous, ominous night, becoming highly symbolic of our most pressing anxieties and fears as a collective culture.
Opening with the heavy swell of music, a clap of thunder and a glimpse of the body, the film’s mission is clear: we’re in for a chilling ride, and it only builds upon this disquieting start, layering creepy moment after creepy moment until they accumulate tension and suspense. Outside of a few glimpses of the outside world and another period, the storytelling is confined to a hospital morgue and its immediate surroundings. But its themes and sense of history have a grand sweep, which we navigate through the nervy, arresting performances of actors K. Steele and Milly Sanders as Tina and Emma.
Tina especially drives the narrative momentum with her growing curiosity about the unusual and gruesome things she discovers on the corpse, but the effectively visceral use of light and especially sound also pulls viewers into an increasingly sinister spell. The taut writing and directing don’t over-explain, but the imagery is striking and haunting enough to tease at connections between the past, characters and settings — until it becomes full-on, skin-crawlingly scary, acquiring a propulsive power.
It’s incredibly gripping, and for horror fans, immensely satisfying, especially as WAKE charges from its icy, creeping build-up into a full-throated, electrifying conclusion. It evokes a world and a past that could easily be built upon as a larger narrative. But most of all, it forces us to confront death right in the face, with its attendant fears of loss, void and oblivion.
