Name: The Awakening (2011)
IMDb: link to IMDb
Genres: Horror, thriller. Country of origin: UK.
Cast: Rebecca Hall (Frost/Nixon; The Town) as Florence Cathcart, Dominic West (300, The Wire) as Robert Mallory, Imelda Staunton (Cranford) as Maud Hill, Isaac Hempstead Wright as Tom Hill, Joseph Mawle (Game of Thrones) as Edward Judd.
Directed by: Nick Murphy
Written by: Nick Murphy and Stephen Volk. These two are UK TV veterans.
Soundtrack by: Nick Murphy.
The Three Acts:
The initial tableaux:
The film opens in London in 1921; the scene is of Florence Cathcart debunking a seance.
Soon thereafter, a Mr Mallory appears at her doorstep claiming to have found a haunting at a school in Rookford in Cumbria. A student death was involved.
Florence has an interlude with her mother. Florence is exhausted. Her mother refers to an obsession, and the consequences of going through with the debunking.
Florence takes on the new case due to some photographic evidence, and Mallory's use of references in her book to her own fears. Florence travels with Mallory to the school, where she meets her ally Maud.
The delineation of conflicts:
In this case, the conflicts are inner conflicts. The film exposes secrets: those of Florence, Mallory, Maud, the coughing teacher, and Judd. That takes a fair amount of time in flashbacks.
Florence finds those involved in the death at the school. A student confesses, and a teacher is exposed. The children leave for a week's vacation at home. So it all seems done.
When she is about to leave, some odd occurrences keep her at the school, and she sets up her equipment again to ferret out the truth. Florence continues to see things that are not there, or so it would seem.
Resolution:
This one managed to surprise me. Rather than insert too many spoilers, suffice it to say that the film was not a horror thriller, but instead was a psychological drama, and the prison of obsession was successfully broken.
One line summary: Psychological drama posed as a ghost story.
Statistics:
Cinematography: 9/10 Dark, with a reduced colour palette. I suppose this was for effect, since focus, depth of field, and framing were fine. There were no jerky camera movements. Despite the darkness, the camera work is far better than such wretched nonsense as Blair Witch.
Sound: 8/10 Adequate.
Acting: 7/10 I liked the adult actors, but neither the child actors nor the interactions of the children with the adults.
Screenplay: 9/10 Kept me guessing, and moved right along.
Final Rating: 8/10
This one managed to surprise me. Rather than insert too many spoilers, suffice it to say that the film was not a horror thriller, but instead was a psychological drama, and the prison of obsession was successfully broken.
One line summary: Psychological drama posed as a ghost story.
Statistics:
Cinematography: 9/10 Dark, with a reduced colour palette. I suppose this was for effect, since focus, depth of field, and framing were fine. There were no jerky camera movements. Despite the darkness, the camera work is far better than such wretched nonsense as Blair Witch.
Sound: 8/10 Adequate.
Acting: 7/10 I liked the adult actors, but neither the child actors nor the interactions of the children with the adults.
Screenplay: 9/10 Kept me guessing, and moved right along.
Final Rating: 8/10
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