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Awaken the Reaper Review
Image Credit: Impact Media Studios
Loading...Awaken the Reaper Review
Joe Winchell– Keith
Mary Kate Magee– Sarah
Dave Campfield– Danny
Seth Gore– Eddie
Charlie William Parks– Carter
Nicole LeMieux– Crystal
Jack F. Marziliano– Craig
Richard Blackwood– Officer Mazer
Lance Henriksen– Deacon Tom
Robin Curtis– Connie
Louis Gossett Jr.– Dr. Benjamin Locke
(check out the rest of the cast here)
Directed by Dave Campfield
Screenplay by Dave Campfield
Produced by Fourth Horizon Cinema in association with Design Weapons and Impact Media Studios
Runtime– 102 minutes
Awaken the Reaper’s official Facebook page
Awaken the Reaper, a new low-budget horror flick written and directed by Dave Campfield that’s set to hit the film festival circuit towards the end of September 2026, is one of the best looking low-budget horror movies I’ve seen in a long time. The movie also features a top notch cast that includes Lance Henriksen, Robin Curits, and Louis Gossett Jr. in one his final movie performances. I’m not entirely sure if the movie comes together at the end, but the journey to that ending is pretty unnerving. That kind of thing matters in a horror movie.
Awaken the Reaper stars Joe Winchell as Keith, a drug addict that has hit a hard time in his life. Still living at home with his parents while also looking out for his deaf brother Eddie (Seth Gore) who also has a seizure disorder, Keith ends up having to participate in a drug counseling group after being arrested for drug use in a car (he also tried to offer a cop a hit off of his marijuana cigarette). While in counseling (the counseling group is led by Deacon Tom, played by Lance Henriksen), Keith becomes friends with Sarah (Mary Kate Magee), and they seem to hit it off. One night while hanging out and whatnot, Sarah invites Keith back to her house. While there, Keith meets Danny (Dave Campfield), Sarah’s brother. But is he? Keith immediately gets a bad vibe being around Danny and leaves the house just as quickly as he entered it.
So then some stuff happens, Keith participates in a camping trip in the woods put together by Deacon Tom, and gets to hang out with Sarah again in a tent. We also find out how, more or less, everyone involved in the drug addiction group is secretly still taking drugs. Yes, some members of the group try to make it clear that they want to get clean and don’t want to get kicked out of the group, but in the end they’re all doing various drugs anyway. Sarah doesn’t hang out with Keith the whole time on this camping trip. In fact, she ends up leaving with Carter (Charlie William Parks), an ex-cop that is really, really, really into doing drugs. Keith is sort of annoyed by this but he can’t do much about it.
So then some more stuff happens, Keith tries contacting Sarah since he hasn’t seen her since the end of the camping trip, and then tells her to meet up with him at a spooky Day of the Dead party. Keith goes to the party, but Sarah isn’t there. Danny is, though. Why the heck is he there? The party host Crystal (Nicole LeMieux) performs some sort of occult ritual thing where she claims to be talking to the dead (I can’t remember what it’s called but it’s sort of like a single person Ouija board thing. That’s the best way I can describe it). It’s all weird, but at the same time no one is all that creeped out by it. It comes off as a party game, sort of. Keith decides to leave the party with two other dudes, and on the way home they all get into a car accident. Keith wakes up in the hospital and finds out that the other two guys in the car were killed in the accident.
It’s at this point that Keith becomes aware of a copy of the group photo that the drug group took on the camping trip that has a tear in it over the faces of the two dead guys from the car accident. What the hell is that all about? Suddenly, Keith becomes super paranoid about life and the world in general. Where is Sarah? Why won’t she return his calls? And what’s the deal with that photograph? And what’s the deal with Danny, who actually isn’t Sarah’s brother and is instead some sort of online medical influencer?
So then even more stuff starts happening, more people in the group start dying, and some members of the group start experiencing weird dreams/nightmares featuring what appears to be a personification of Death. Is it the Grim Reaper? Is the Grim Reaper actually real? Just what the heck is going on here?
The rest of the movie is Keith trying to find out what happened to Sarah, trying to figure out what this “personification of Death” thing is all about, trying to navigate his now fractured home life (Keith’s parents want Keith to leave the house, but Keith has out metal bars on his windows and refuses to leave the house), and trying to keep an eye on Eddie, too. Eddie keeps having seizures, and it seems as though each new seizure is stronger than the last one. Keith and his parents are terrified that if they’re not there with Eddie when he seizes to help him that he will die, and no one wants that. On top of that, Keith’s neighbor Connie (Robin Curtis) is a medical professional that his parents hope will help him, but he doesn’t entirely trust her. And on top of all of that, Danny keeps showing up in spots that Keith doesn’t expect him to. Who the heck is Danny for real?
Awaken the Reaper is one of the best looking low-budget horror movies I’ve ever seen. From the crisp cinematography by Justin Paul to the editing by Dave Campfield, Awaken the Reaper looks and plays like a big hooha studio movie. The movie also has a top notch soundtrack by Derek Carden and Jake Ziegler. The movie is probably a bit too long (I think, generally, low-budget horror movies work best when they’re around 90 minutes, and Awaken the Reaper is over 100 minutes), but at the same time I’m not sure what could or should be cut. I would love to see what this movie looks like in a real deal movie theater with booming sound.
The flick’s special effects are decent enough. It looks like writer/director Campfield used a mix of practical special effects and CGI, and most of what we experience is spooky and weird, especially when the personification of Death shows up. It looks like a demon covered in black goo. That’s messed up, man. There are also some terrific surreal montages that could creep you out, although they don’t work quite as well towards the end of the movie. It could be that there are too many of them and they just don’t have the same effect later in the movie. There’s only one dodgy effect where a character is set on fire. “Man-on-fire” sequences are incredibly hard to pull off via CGI, even on mega blockbuster movies, and I don’t know if that will ever change.
The cast is amazing. Joe Winchell does a great job as Keith, a guy with numerous problems who is trying his best to fix them. Sort of. At first, it’s obvious that Keith isn’t the least bit interested in resolving his issues with drugs or, really, anything else. He tells Deacon Tom during his first group meeting that he is being forced to attend the meeting. And it’s also pretty obvious that Keith is still dedicated to taking drugs. But as the movie progresses and things get even worse for Keith as he tries to figure out what the heck happened to Sarah, you can see that he’s growing and figuring out that he needs to fix his issues little by little. Keith is also dedicated to helping his brother Eddie, which is nice to see (he never abandons Eddie). Don’t be surprised if you start to think that Winchell is playing Keith as though Keith is a young Seth Rogen or Seth Rogen’s stunt double because the resemblance, both physically and in terms of his performance, is uncanny. I think audiences will end up liking Keith quite a bit.
Mary Kate Magee does a fine job as Sarah. Magee plays Sarah as someone who loves life and loves having fun. Much like Keith, it’s obvious that she has problems, too, and is doing her best, in a way, to fix them, and you can’t really dislike her. When she abandons Keith to hang out with Carter you might question her judgement doing that, but, again, you can’t get too mad at her. I would have liked to see more scenes with Sarah and Keith just hanging out, as they have undeniable “couples chemistry.” I won’t say what happens to Sarah in the movie, although I will say that it’s a damn shame. A damn, damn shame.
Dave Campfield is creepy as hell as Danny. You immediately suspect he’s untrustworthy the second you first see him, and that feeling only grows as the movie progresses and you find out more about him. There are also moments where you’re unsure if Danny is a hallucination, especially one scene involving a team of orderlies emerging from inside of a psychiatric hospital (is that really Danny? Why the hell is he there?). I’m amazed at how good Campfield’s performance is when you find out how much he did to make the movie. He’s the writer, the director, a featured actor, the editor, and God knows what else (you would need to go through the movie’s closing credits to see how many times his name pops up). How the heck did he do all of that?
Seth Gore does a good job as Eddie. You can tell that he loves his brother Keith and wants to look out for him in the same way Keith looks out for him, and that’s cool as hell. The moments where we see Eddie experiencing a seizure are often heart wrenching. I’m also a big fan of how the subtitles under Eddie’s sign language scenes are sort of disjointed. Sometimes the sentences you read take a moment to fully understand but it’s not like you don’t get what’s being discussed. I can’t really explain why this works as well as it does. I would have loved to see more from Eddie and Eddie hanging out with his brother.
Charlie William Parks does a good job as Carter, the cop in the group that just skeeves you the hell out. I mean, that’s what happened with me. There isn’t a moment in the movie where you can say that you trust him or that he’s a good person at all. The only character you don’t trust more than Carter is Danny. And Nicole LeMieux does a good job as Crystal, although I do think that her character could have been explored a bit more. I won’t say what happens to her beyond saying that it happens too quickly. Crystal probably need two or three more minutes of screen time. Probably.
Lance Henriksen does a fantastic job as Deacon Tom. Deacon Tom is old, grizzled, has lived life and seen God knows what and done God knows what. He wants to help everyone that comes into his group, but he also doesn’t have time for bullshit. Watching Henriksen search people in his group for drugs is weirdly hilarious, as is his intensity at times (I would love to see more of Deacon Tom running his meetings. That could be its own movie). It’s always a pleasure to see Henriksen in anything, as he always kicks ass no matter what he’s doing, and I don’t think it’s wrong to say that Henriksen likely had the time of his life as Deacon Tom. Great stuff.
Robin Curtis does a wonderful job as Connie, Keith’s neighbor who is also a medical professional of some sort. Connie is another character in the movie that, at times, seems like she might not be real or part of some sort of elaborate hallucination. Because what the heck is going on with her, too? I think you’ll be surprised by how her character’s arc is resolved. Maybe.
And then there’s Louis Gossett Jr. as Dr. Benjamin Locke. Gossett Jr. mostly interacts with Winchell’s Keith via computer video and does a good job in a part that can probably best be described as an extended cameo. Gossett Jr. is clearly engaged in what he’s doing as Dr. Locke and, despite appearing via computer video, isn’t phoning in his performance. Gossett Jr. isn’t in the movie all that long, but he makes the most out of the scenes that he’s in, and he reminds everyone like only he can that he is goddamn Louis Gossett Jr.
I’m not entirely sure the movie really comes together at the end. It doesn’t really peter out or exhaust itself, but for some reason it seems like the movie has too much happening as it approaches its conclusion and it doesn’t feel like it resolves much of anything. It could be that the explanation for what’s really going on needs to be clearer and more concise. It seems to me that, with this story, ambiguity is not the movie’s friend because ambiguity just leads to confusion, and you don’t want the audience to be confused at the end. I don’t know, maybe my opinion on that aspect of the movie would change if I saw it again. Maybe.
Despite my misgivings on how the movie ends, Awake the Reaper is very much a low-budget horror movie that I want to recommend. If you find out that it’s playing at a film festival near you, you should absolutely make an effort to see it in that realm. If the movie doesn’t end up playing at a film festival near you, be sure to check it out whenever it hits Video on Demand/streaming/home video. It’s very much worth your time.
See Awake the Reaper. See it, see it, see it.
So what do we have here?
Dead bodies: Over 10.
Explosions: None.
Nudity?: None.
Doobage: An up close look at a human eye. A montage of things with a scary voice voiceover. A phone call. Car fixing. Dope smoking. Pill crushing. Powder snorting. Talk of a Labor Day fireworks show. People watching fireworks on a rooftop. Talk of a seizure. Talk of the stars above. Police hooey. A drug counseling group session. Swinging on a swing. A weird house. A seizure. A flashing TV. A camping trip. A group picture out in the woods. Sleeping in tents. A “let’s take drugs” session around a campfire. Multiple attempted phone calls. Red lights in the basement. A big party. A crystal on a chain. An occult ceremony thing. Drunk driving. Car accident aftermath. A photo under a tire. Metal bars on the window. A bloody Halloween sticker. A CGI “man-on-fire” bit. A shotgun in a box. Multiple hallucinations. Head shaving. Neck stabbing. A bottle of magnesium tablets. Old videogames. A serious rain storm. Men wearing white T-shirts. Heart attack. A shed. An arm wound. A police investigation. Hot wiring a car. Cop stuff. Tape bondage. Chain bondage. Powder to the face. Taser attack. Vape hooey. A tape gag. Chocolate candy eating. A train. Attempted death via car exhaust. An Asian woman. A broken cell phone. Window smashing. Gas masks. More seizures. More powder to the face. Serious chest stabbing.
Kim Richards? None.
Gratuitous: A Friedrich Nietzsche quote. Guy talking to a guinea pig. American Sign Language. “Nice Tits” written on a notepad. The months of the year. Lance Henriksen as a deacon. Lance Henriksen leading a drug counseling group session. Lance Henriksen having a big issue with people vaping in his presence. A leather jacket with an American flag on the back of it. A Halloween display. A guinea pig named Betty. Lance Henriksen searching people for drugs before he takes them on a camping trip in the woods. Lance Henriksen smoking a cigarette. A news radio update. Jesus on the cross. An occult ceremony thing. An unexpected drug connection. Sudden agoraphobia. Facebook hooey. Louis Gossett Jr. Guy talking to Louis Gossett Jr. through video on Facebook. Rocks with sayings on them. Tarot cards. A Krusty the Klown tattoo.
Best lines: “Craig, I keep telling you I have a plan.” “Hey, how’s the bar? Eddie is here.” “Will you calm down, weed is legal.” “Hi, I’m Keith. I’m here because a judge forced me to be.” “That’s good. He’s being honest. Nobody here should be afraid of being honest.” “Put that vape away.” “I think that deacon is watching us.” “I’ve lived out of a car before.” “I hate being alive.” “Don’t try to figure me out, Keith. You’re not going to like what you find.” “Daniel Peter Harland? Daniel Peter Harland.” “What the fuck is this?” “Am I understanding you correct? You are death?” “Ask it when I’m going to die.” “Where the fuck are my cigarettes?” “Can’t stay in your room all day.” “Do I look like a scumbag?” “I think you need to leave your house in order to be a stalker.” “If you need it, it’s an addiction. Yeah, tell me one person on the planet that doesn’t have an addiction.” “Any way I can smoke this?” “I have no future.” “I feel like this whole thing happened because of me.” “You’re not taking me to the institution, are you? Holy shit, she’s taking me to the institution.” “Oh, that went well.” “I hit my head on the crib because I was trying to black out.”
