The Awakening

The guy next to me in this screening promptly referred to this film as the ‘asleepening’. Whilst I didn’t quite feel it had soporific powers, (quite the contrary, I jumped an average of 3 inches from my seat on numerous occasions) I couldn’t help but think it was certainly a forgettable effort at a tired genre.

Florence Cathcart (Rebecca Hall) , author of ‘Seeing Through Ghosts’ is asked to investigate a rural boys school in Cumbria after one of the pupils is found dead following sightings of a spectre. Sceptic Florence, prepares to debunk the ghost stories surrounding the school but quelle surprise, things aren’t quite as easy as that. Although able to temporarily shock audiences, the twists and turns in this film veer ever-closer to the utterly ridiculous. By the time the final twist rolled around, slower than the steam train we see gliding across the Cumbrian hills, I was glad. But even here Murphey couldn’t resist drawing it out that little bit longer, so any impetus the truly tense moments in the film managed to create is rendered ineffective by the film’s convoluted conclusion.

Dominic West gives a good performance as the broken ‘Robert Mallorey’ a teacher at the school haunted by his experience in the war, and the chemistry between him and Hall is both believable and enjoyable to watch. As was the film itself if you took it at a purely visual level, the cinematography perhaps being it’s only saving grace. Ultimately I felt that Murphey was attempting to follow in the ghostly footsteps of Guiellmo del Toro, but the complete lack of subtlety places the film eons beneath the devils backbone and closer to the tacky horrors that pop up every other month (particularly last month!). I really wanted to like this film, I’d say it was worth a watch just for its potential to raise your heart rate and to satisfy any cravings you may have for some plummy gothic aesthetics, but really, it was not my piece of spooky post-war cake.