Awake Review

 

Awake is a science fiction action movie. The film is produced by Entertainment One and Paul Schiff Productions and distributed by Netflix. Awake is written by Gregory Poirier and directed by Mark Raso.

The story is a mysterious catastrophe has not only wiped out all electronics across the world but has also taken away people's ability to sleep. Scientist are trying to find a cure for these sudden unexplained cases of insomnia before the effects become so fatal that it wipes out humanity. While this is going Jill has discovered her daughter may be the key to solving this problem.

Initial Reaction

The main thing that go my attention for this particular movie was the premise. This sounds like an absolute nightmare, sure I've pulled some all nights in the past but I never had a case of insomnia. So I could only imagine what it would be like one an apocalyptic level. Like I said that sounds like a nightmare, especially for people who do suffer from insomnia.

Cons

One of the sadly many bad things about this movie is the editing. This movie was not pieced together very well, there times when it felt like we didn't even smoothly transition to the next scene or there was something odd about the scenes. For instance, Jill gets into a car crash and the car goes into the nearest body of water, she gets both her son and daughter out of there, and we see the daughter swim perfectly to the top while Jill is trying to rescue her son. Then 20 seconds later, your daughter apparently drowned. Cause the next shot is her getting CPR by a cop! Did I accidently hit fast forward or something? What happened? Why is she all of sudden getting CPR when we saw her swim just fine? You get quite a lot of scenes like that and it's very distracting. Another issue with Awake is it's just too short. This is one of those movies were a longer running time was needed. Because when we're watching the film there doesn't seem to be a good amount of progression. The movie wants you to believe the events going on around the characters took months but yet, from my viewing experience it seemed like only three days went by and all of sudden everyone is freakin' insane and the environment looks like it's in the middle phase of the apocalypse. I know when you don't get a lack of sleep for a large number of days things get serious, but I doubt it happens as fast as the movie made it out to be. The other flaw with the film is there was no consistency for the insomnia. Jill was able to keep her sanity for weeks upon weeks, her son Noah barely showed any symptoms at all, and there was also a character named Dodge who even though much like everyone else he hasn't gotten any sleep, he didn't look nor sound tired at all. I don't know how it was possible for the filmmakers to screw up their own basic premise but they did. The other problem with Awake is the characters. They are boring. That get a slim to none level of character development. I mean, Jill has somewhat of a backstory but it's so small that you're gonna forget about it or it might as well not be in the movie to begin with. Now we arrive at the movie's biggest issue, and that's nothing is explained. I don't need a movie to give me every single small tiny detail about the world it builds but come on. I understand the filmmakers wanted to keep things as vague as possible but sprinkle in some clues here and there. They gave us no hint of what caused the catastrophe, or if it was possibly man made. Then, just to make matters worse, the ending shows us how to cure the insomnia but of course, it's not explained! Again, let me repeat, you don't have to show every little thing but give the audience some sort of hint.

Middle Ground

I've got nothing to say. Let's move on.

Pros

The only good thing about the movie is Gina Rodriguez's performance. Her acting is the only thing stopping me from giving this movie my lowest rating.

Awake is really bad. The editing is off, it desperately needed a longer runtime, there was no consistency with the insomnia, the characters are very much underdeveloped, and nothing is either explained or hinted at. The only good thing was Gina's performance.

My final rating is Awful.

First Infinite and now this. Two letdowns in the span of three days. Oh well. Come back on Thursday, Jun 17th for part two of the Road to The Batman, with my review of Batman Returns. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day, and don't bother with this movie.