Frank is an insurance lawyer who is close to winning a promotion at a large company. He has a dull marriage, heavy bills, and a job that rewards him for finding ways to deny families their money. After a night out with his friend Jeff, Frank takes a strange drug at a party. The drug throws him through broken pieces of time, strange places, violent danger, and shifting versions of reality.
Frank meets Theresa during the trip, and she becomes a guide who pushes him to face what he has done. The film treats his work, debt, spending, and wish for status as signs of a life built on bad choices. Frank must decide whether to keep his job or help the family harmed by his insurance work. Its main ideas are guilt, moral change, cosmic balance, and the search for meaning, with a wild, drug-heavy, dreamlike tone.
Community feedback
Was our 23% Woke rating accurate?
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for The Wave.
Woke representation / casting
Not present. The film uses a mixed modern American cast, but the story does not make race, gender, religion, or diversity part of its message.
0%
Woke political dialogue
Not present. The dialogue centers on Frank's job, money, drugs, marriage, and strange cosmic events. It does not contain modern identity, DEI, or activist talking points.
0%
Identity-driven story themes
Not present. The story follows Frank's guilt, moral change, and search for meaning after a drug trip. It does not build its main conflict around race, gender, sexuality, or representation.
0%
Western institutional / cultural critique
The film repeatedly shows an insurance company looking for loopholes to deny a firefighter's family a large payout. Frank's boss says he would bribe judges and change laws to stop the claim. Frank learns that his debt, spending, and hunger for status have helped make him morally empty. The ending favors doing right over keeping a place inside that corporate system. The story strongly criticizes corporate power, greed, and materialism, but it does not turn the message into current identity politics.
42%
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant. The film is an original science-fiction story and does not change an established character, canon, or real historical figure.
0%
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Not present. The supplied X research found no anti-woke reaction or named complaint. Reddit and review coverage mostly discusses the confusing plot, drugs, visuals, and moral lesson rather than DEI or identity politics.
0%
Creator track record context
The director has no clear activist or identity-focused public record, and his interview about this film focuses on psychedelics, visuals, corporate exploitation, and morality. The writer has worked on stories about immigration and migrant workers. One producer has made a documentary about black women and women's lives. Most other key crew members have little or no public record of similar work, so the creator track record is a weak context signal.
12%
Production
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