Wake

Narrative Feature, Lone Star States
D: Chad Feehan; with Josh Stewart, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Chris Browning, Angela Featherstone

Writer/director Feehan, a producer on the Bastrop-area-filmed horror movie All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, sets his debut film Wake in one of the scariest of all movie locations: a roadside motel. Weary from a drive across the American Southwest, Paul (Stewart) and Adrienne (Sigler) check in to Roy’s Motel. It’s there that their secure-seeming relationship falls apart, threatened by secrets from the past and ghosts from beyond. The desk clerk, Frank (Browning), couldn’t be any weirder; Frank’s wife, Sandy (Featherstone), appears to be the town slut; the jukebox in the diner only plays “He’s Got the Devil in His Heart”; and Paul is joined there for pie and coffee by a man who claims he’s the son of God. The film looks good, even if all its rehashed ingredients make you wonder if you’ve checked in to the Overlook Hotel’s budget lodgings.

This article appears in March 26 • 2010.

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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.