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The Awakening

Reviews

Ludicrous contrivances and a disregard for slow-burning tension.

Posted 11th November 2011, 8:47am in Film, by Becky Reed


Released in cinemas 11th November 2011.

Television director Nick Murphy makes a shaky start to his film career, taking an interesting horror premise and captivating actress, then fashioning a thoroughly awkward and hokey horror.

Rebecca Hall is an understated, classy presence in everything she does (Frost/Nixon, Vicky Cristina Barcelona), but is required to be a contemporary presence in 1921 England as Florence Cathcart. In a weary post-WWI atmosphere, the quick-witted author exposes phoney psychics and hoaxers in spectacular fashion, with the showmanship of Derren Brown.

It's a promising, if hurried start to a film that careers through every horror trope imaginable, without bringing anything fresh to the genre. James Wan and Leigh Whannell have carved an audacious career out of such shenanigans with the likes of Saw and Insidious, but do so with a genuine passion for thrills and chills. The Awakening is a film content to merely go through the motions, ticking boxes.

Florence is hired by Dominic West's school master to investigate the ghost sightings that are terrifying the young boys at a boarding school. Imelda Staunton is the gushing matron and Florence's biggest fan, admiring the debunker as she sets up her equipment and quizzes the naughty kids. Murphy sets up the inevitable spooky happenings in predictable fashion, stuffing in ludicrous contrivances and a disregard for slow-burning tension.

West and Hall have an interesting dynamic, both bearing scars from the Great War in their own way, but the film mangles their chemistry with an embarrassingly staged, long-winded seduction that feels completely out of place. That's not even mentioning a gratuitous sexual assault that gets chucked in for no valid reason.

There's an interesting film to be made with Hall's character, but this unsophisticated rehash of The Others and The Orphanage is not it. The elaborate twist will annoy plenty, but at least it gives this finely-shot hokum a decent, entertaining send-off after two hours without a single shiver.

Rating: 4/10

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