Rating: NR | Runtime: 87 minutes
Release Date: January 27th, 2023 (USA)
Studio: XYZ Films
Director(s): Carlos Montaner & Liz Fania Werner
Writer(s): Liz Fania Werner

It’s time. I’m coming for her.

Sunny (Kimberly Alexander) was forced to kill a man seventeen years ago in a cult ritual led by her prophet Paul (Michael Madsen). What else transpired that day is unknown as directors Liz Fania Werner (who also wrote the screenplay) and Carlos Montaner fast-forward to the present to find Karma (Hannah Christine Shetler) anticipating the annual birthday ritual of cake, swimming, and sweets her mother is about to commence.

We can guess, though, once the teen’s wish is revealed to be a long-held desire to change her last name. She doesn’t want to walk around her adult life in Paul’s shadow like she had her adolescence, but Sunny explains the reason she gave her his name was to never forget the evil he wrought.

Waking Karma therefore begins with a concise dose of exposition that’s naturally born from the celebratory conversations held by a too-close mother and daughter duo. The reason it’s all coming out now is because Karma was accepted to Harvard and attending means separating from her mother for the first time ever.

She was nervous Sunny wouldn’t take the news well and wonders if she perhaps underestimated her when the opposite proves true, but a wrench is thrown before any concrete plans can be hatched. An unstamped letter is pushed beneath their door with a message from Paul. After all this time, he’s decided to come out of hiding and retrieve his child.

Even though it doesn’t take much to hypothesize what’s really happening—low budget thrillers with few characters often can’t afford subterfuge—I was admittedly captivated with the drama as Sunny and Karma flee to hide on the property of two other reformed disciples holed up in the woods (Bradley Fisher’s Butch and Christine Sloane’s Priscilla).

It’s here that we learn more of the details Karma’s mother never divulged and anticipate Paul’s return with an over-the-top panache that only Madsen can supply. Unfortunately, despite the latter having fun with the character’s built-in villainy, the action becomes hamstrung by a repetitive loop of tests and delusions. It becomes a bit of slog before an effective reveal breaks the pattern and, sadly, a slog again before the climax.

An underlying theme of getting out from beneath your parents’ expectations to live your own life is present, but it never quite coalesces with the serial killer cult aspects on a figurative level. Everything that happens on-screen is so literal that it becomes difficult to not feel as though we’re simply being led down a series of narrative checkpoints.

The one exception comes from those delusions because Karma sees things she can’t know. Add Paul’s explanation for why and I couldn’t help getting excited for a shift into the supernatural that never comes. Alexander and Shetler get a few really strong moments together to allow the grounded nature of the whole to resonate, but it’s not enough to mask the superficiality of the vessel.

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Hannah Christine Shetler in WAKING KARMA; courtesy of XYZ Films.