If I Die Before I Wake is not a guilty pleasure (and definitely not a pleasure, period), but it did provoke a very guilty reaction from me, one of admiration. Other critics have dismissed it outright, calling it cheap, classist, exploitative, even sick. Guess what? It is all of those things, yet I found the film's minimalist approach overriding in its enthrallment, and there is combustible tension in our heroine's plight that had me doing lectio divina for her safety. If I Die Before I Wake, unlike so much modern schlock (believe me, I've seen my quota), made me feel panic, which almost qualifies it.

One could compare the film to umpteen hider-in-the-house movies, including Michael Cimino's remake of The Desperate Hours, from which it appears to borrow elements basic: upper-middle-class family has nook-and-cranny filled home invaded by ne'er-do-wells. But If I Die Before I Wake (only the "I"'s are capitalized in the onscreen title) is most like an exten-da-mix of the terrifying home movie Henry and Otis shot in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, sans--barely--necrophilia. If that ain't a word of caution, I don't know what is. But I digress...

With opening shots that remember the power of silent cinema, debut-director Brian Katkin (an editor by trade, and that shows in his rhythmic tempo) establishes Mom, Dad and the kids, web-surfing Ben (unwisely blotting out the world with a pair of headphones) and two disparately aged girls: the high school student Lori Beth, and Mary, who bears useful, if eerie, resemblance to Jon Benet Ramsey. (Very young Coryanne Sennett is astonishingly good in the role.) The camera has sprawled the essential rooms of the house, winding back up at the front door, whose deadbolt is destroyed by three intruders. "We're in," one says to the rest.

Artisan DVD's tagline for If I Die Before I Wake, "Don't ever forget to lock your doors!", undersells the product. These people did lock their door; if you'll accept a house-as-body metaphor, then burglars serve as cancer. The film thrives on portraying the place of robbery as the family's flesh. They're defined by it and protected by it, and its mere presence makes them vulnerable; that's why I'm tempted to call it a rape drama over anything else, an argument that has some validity in the common, if skewed, 'womb symbolization' of the hijacked high-rise in Die Hard.

Stephanie Jones' Lori Beth is more like John McClane than she is your generic scream queen: she's outwitting the terrorists from early frames, not waiting for the climax to kick her a$$ in gear. Trying in vain to contact the proper authorities, blindsiding the unsuspecting killers with old-fashioned smarts, and hiding in the chimney (If I Die Before I Wake's equivalent of Die Hard's air ducts), Lori Beth even wears a McClane-style muscle shirt, a titillating costume choice wisely offset by pyjama bottoms. All this to protect little sis'--the rest of her kin is a lost cause, anyway.

Aye, there's the rub: the film is a rape drama to the nth degree. By its finish (actually, by a few minutes in), we feel violated, unclean, and not just for the multiple fatal tortures of shrieking innocents (though there's that). This is the sort of film in which the only bad guy in moral turmoil keeps Mary hidden from his putrid brother (I Know What You Did Last Summer's Captain Hell-liner Muse Watson, the hinge of the DVD's marketing campaign) by locking her in the refrigerator.

There's even a scene that directly recalls--in spirit, not in content--said camcorder footage from Henry: Mary, revealing the when-push-comes-to-shove ingenuity of children, distracts the killers by popping a vacation video into the VCR. As Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5 swells on the soundtrack, the images of our beleaguered brood in happier times play like sympathy pornography. The longhairs in torn clothing watch with scientific fascination as these suburbanites have their day at the beach, and it's such moments that inspire more unnecessary fear of America's impoverished. If I Die Before I Wake prays on our base feelings; that's why it works, and that's why it shouldn't.

Artisan's disc is nothing special, but neither is it a total wash. The full-frame (1.33:1) transfer appears to have a 16mm source, for there is excessive grain and low level shadow detail. (The film is also dark in every sense of the word.) The English Dolby Surround sound (listed in the closing credits as "Surround Sound," meaning some friend with ProTools probably mixed this) is hardly dynamic. The effects themselves make a better impression than their directionality. Occasional post-synch dialogue is obvious from mismatched lip movements. Animated menus also offer access to slim biographies and four trailers (for Premonition, Bloody Murder, The Crimson Code, and Eastside), complete with full-motion sub-menu previews! Incidentally, while labelled a 2001 release on cover art (and 1998 at various Internet locales), If I Die Before I Wake carries a copyright date of 1996 in end titles.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age