The Minute You Wake Up Dead (2022)

1 Star (out of 4)

Messed to Kill

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

This shockingly bad murder "mystery" consists of dumb characters who commit crimes, confess them too soon and to the wrong people, and then do the same again, with no plan on how not to get caught.

Stockbroker Russ Potter (Cole Hauser), who has returned to his small southern town after a big city education, is not very popular this morning. After convincing many of the locals to invest in a potential merger, the merger did not go through, and everyone has lost money. He even receives threatening phone calls, asking "where will you be the minute you wake up dead?"

Only Delaine (Jaimie Alexander), a server in a cafe, sticks by him, and soon they begin to form a tender relationship. Unfortunately, Delaine's father (Andrew Stevens) is unexpectedly murdered. They go to Sheriff Thurmond Fowler (Morgan Freeman), and decide that perhaps Russ was the actual target, and that the murder was a mistake. But more murders are committed and the mystery deepens.

The Minute You Wake Up Dead starts with one of those flash-forwards to an "exciting" event that occurs two-thirds of the way in, which makes no sense and simply disguises the fact that the filmmakers have no confidence in the actual beginning of the story. It also begins and ends with Morgan Freeman reading some "life is funny that way"-type narration because, why not, so long as you have Morgan Freeman on hand? Even before the murders start the characters seem a little off, as if the actors didn't quite know what approach to take.

But when the murders start, everything gets really screwy. Characters willy-nilly confess their murders to whoever happens to be listening, and no one seems to have any plan. (Everyone is after a large insurance check, and, presumably, the last person left alive gets to keep it? Without being arrested?) Characters just show up at the right place at the right time where their victim just happens to be, and simply go homicidal.

The only intelligent moment in the entire movie is the final one, a supposed irony that shows all the dumb characters getting just what they deserve. Truthfully, if a viewer were to witness just one minute of The Minute You Wake Up Dead, they'd know that they were surely in the wrong place.