Name: Awaken (2015)
IMDb: link to IMDb
Genres: Horror Country of Origin: USA.
Cast: Darryl Hannah as Mao, Vinnie Jones as Sarge, Jason London as Rich, Michael Paré as Xander, Natalie Burn as Billie Kope, Robert Davi as Quentin, Edward Furlong as Berto, Wayne Kao as MJ, Christa Campbell as Kat, David Keith as Walsh, Augie Duke as Chloe, Michael Copan as Nick, Philip Tan as Todd, Katrin Assi as Erin, Christa Campbell as Kat.
Directed by: Mark Atkins. Written by: Mark Atkins, Natalie Burn, Scott Martin.
The initial tableaux: Billie wakes up on a beach, battered and covered with sand. Her short term memory is shot, but she remembers to find her dog tags before proceeding inland. She soon joins a chase where one side is armed, and she is among the chased. Erin is separated and killed by Sarge, the leader of the armed uniformed men. Billie escapes with Berto, Chloe, Nick, and Todd, who lead her to Quentin, the de facto leader of the prisoners. Billie swaps kidnapping stories with the others.
Rich seems to be the straw boss of the island. He's disappointed with Sarge that Erin is dead. Mao is coming the next day.
Delineation of conflicts: The gang of kidnappers/murderers would like to keep the human traffic flowing, since there is a lot of money in organ harvesting. The prisoners would like to escape with their lives. If possible, hurting the efforts of the traffickers would be nice. The gang has weapons, transportation, radios, money, and contacts. The prisoners have their good health, for a while, at least. Billie tries to figure out the connections among them.
Resolution: Do the prisoners find a weakness?
One line summary: Cliche vanity film.
Statistics:
a. Cinematography: 1/10 The extensive shaky cam scenes did not help. Whoever did framing and transitions could have done a lot better. Gratuitous zooming is something I have not seen for years.
b. Sound: 5/10 OK, but nothing special.
c. Acting: 2/10 Robert Davi, Michael Paré, David Keith, Vinnie Jones, and Edward Furlong have all been in much better films than this one. However, the script is so poor that even good actors sound unconvincing. The protagonist (and her single expression) was bad enough to sink the whole effort by herself, but she has plenty of help from the bit players. Darryl Hannah has also been in some fine films, but her performance here was terrible.
d. Screenplay: 1/10 Did not make a lick of sense. I lost the count of instances of 'how could that possibly happen?' The scenes written for Darryl Hannah were especially bad. Pitting three civilians against two groups of well-armed mercenaries, for instance, was just ridiculous. The action scenes were uniformly unconvincing. These failures were so bad that efforts at exposition and motivation were badly blunted.
Final rating: 2/10
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