A late-night radio host receives a series of eerie calls that blur the line between memory and reality, leading him into a haunting confrontation with grief, guilt, and the voices that never truly leave us.

The Waking Call, directed by Riccardo Suriano, is a slow-burning suspense thriller that transforms the quiet solitude of a late-night radio booth into a chamber of reckoning. As a radio host fields what begins as routine calls, the voices on the other end grow increasingly unsettling—blurring the line between memory and reality. What unfolds is less about an external threat and more about the inescapable echoes of grief and guilt that refuse to stay buried.

Suriano, whose previous works Dreadstone: The Beginning, Bound by Blood, and Along Came Ruby have explored tension, morality, and psychological unease, once again leans into atmosphere and character-driven suspense. With its claustrophobic soundscape and restrained pacing, The Waking Call becomes a meditation on unresolved loss and the voices we carry long after the line goes dead. It’s a haunting reminder that some conversations are never truly over.

The Waking Call blurs the boundary between memory and reality through a series of late-night radio calls. What was the initial spark for this story — was it rooted more in character, atmosphere, or a specific emotional experience?

The initial spark was emotional before it was narrative. It began with the image of a man alone at night, in a space that feels controlled and safe, slowly realizing that something inside him is not.
It started with atmosphere, with that fragile silence of late hours when thoughts grow louder. But very quickly it became about character. I was interested in someone who listens for a living, who offers comfort and guidance to others, yet avoids confronting his own unresolved pain.
The radio calls became the cracks in that control. They are not simply plot devices. They are ruptures in his emotional stability.

Radio is such an intimate yet disembodied medium. What drew you to setting the story within a late-night broadcast, and how does that environment amplify themes of isolation and vulnerability?

Radio fascinates me because it is intimate without being physical. You speak into darkness. You hear voices without faces. That tension felt perfect for a story about isolation.
A late-night host is surrounded by voices yet physically alone. There is something haunting about that illusion of connection. At night, people confess more. They are more honest and more vulnerable. That vulnerability allowed the film to explore grief and guilt in a quiet, restrained way.

The film explores grief and guilt as lingering presences — almost like voices that refuse to fade. How did you approach externalizing those internal emotions in a cinematic way?

I did not want grief to be explained. I wanted it to behave like something invasive.
Instead of flashbacks or overt exposition, we allowed it to seep into the atmosphere through subtle sound distortion, shifts in rhythm, and emotional pauses. The room never physically transforms, but emotionally it begins to collapse.
The calls feel external, yet they are shaped by his internal state. Guilt becomes a frequency. Something persistent that cannot simply be switched off.

There’s a quiet psychological tension that builds steadily throughout the film. How did you calibrate the pacing to keep the story haunting without revealing too much too soon?

Restraint was essential.
Psychological horror loses power when it rushes. If you reveal too much too early, you remove the audience’s participation. We approached pacing like breathing. The opening feels grounded and almost ordinary. Then small disruptions appear. Then longer silences. Then moments that feel slightly wrong but not clearly supernatural.
The goal was to let the audience question their perception at the same pace as the protagonist.

Sound plays a crucial role in shaping the atmosphere. How did you and your sound team design the sonic world to blur what’s real and what may exist only in the host’s mind?

We treated sound as a character rather than a background layer.
Static has texture and presence. Some voices are slightly too clean. Others feel buried or distant. The intention was not volume or aggression but ambiguity.
There are moments where the audience is not entirely sure whether something was spoken or imagined. Silence was just as important as sound. Often what you do not hear becomes more unsettling than what you do.

The idea of “voices that never truly leave us” feels central to the film. Do you see those voices as manifestations of unresolved trauma, memory, or something more supernatural?

I am less interested in defining them and more interested in how they are experienced.
For me, they represent unresolved memory. The kind that never fully dissolves. Whether they are supernatural or psychological is secondary. What matters is that they feel real to him.
Trauma often feels supernatural. It arrives uninvited. It speaks in your own voice.

Your previous shorts have often leaned into emotional introspection and restrained tension. How does The Waking Call expand on or challenge your earlier storytelling approach?

My earlier shorts explored introspection, but sometimes leaned heavily on atmosphere.
With this film, I wanted to strip everything down further. One actor. One space. Minimal movement.
It challenged me to rely almost entirely on performance, rhythm, and emotional precision rather than visual spectacle. It forced me to trust stillness more than movement.

The protagonist is largely alone on screen, yet the film never feels empty. What was your process in guiding performance to carry such psychological weight within a confined setting?

We focused on micro shifts.
In a confined space, performance cannot be theatrical. It has to feel lived in. We worked on breath patterns, eye movement, timing between lines, and the hesitation before picking up the receiver.
The character is trying to maintain control. That resistance makes the unraveling more powerful.

When audiences leave The Waking Call, what feeling do you hope lingers with them — unease, catharsis, reflection, or something else entirely?

I do not want loud fear.
I hope what lingers is quiet unease. The kind that resurfaces later in silence. A memory of a line, a sound, a pause.
If someone leaves the film and sits in stillness for a moment longer than usual, reflecting on the voices they carry within themselves, then the film has done its job.