‘Wake Up’ Review: An Eco-Protest in an Ikea-Style Showroom Gives New Meaning to ‘Direct Action’

variety.com:

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic In “Wake Up,” six young activists are determined to make a point. Instead, they wind up on the receiving end of one: stabbed, speared or otherwise impaled by the psychotic security guard at the Ikea-esque House Idea store they’ve targeted for an ecoterrorism stunt.

Conceived and executed by what remains of RKSS — the Canadian filmmaking collective behind “Turbo Kid” and “Summer of 84” — the wicked English-language thriller is much bloodier (and a lot less pretentious) than Bertrand Bonello’s “Nocturama,” the 2016 art film in which a crew of militant Parisian hipsters hid out in a posh department store after planting bombs around town.

There, the young anarchists spent the night ransacking the newly renovated Printemps HQ, whereas in this case, the half-dozen kids strike back at a company that pillages the rainforests to bring you unpronounceable, impossible-to-assemble Kallax shelves and Järvfjället chairs.

Named for its ELF-like gang of young radicals, “Wake Up” isn’t really a political statement against Ikea — although it does satisfy the widely held fantasy of imagining what one might do if given the run of such a showroom after dark.