With its interesting premise, "Awake" could have been so much more. But with a barely-developed concept and flat acting in tow, this film is the perfect example of what half-baked truly feels like.
A sudden global event wipes out all electronics and with it also takes away humankind’s ability to sleep. Humans need sleep or else they will literally lose their minds in days and die soon after. As anticipated, chaos begins to consume the world. Jill (Gina Rodriguez), an ex-soldier who has suffered with sleeping problems before, finds out that her daughter can sleep. Her former psychiatrist informs her that they are trying to find a cure in a place they're calling The Hub. Jill is hesitant at first but she has no options left but to go there. Can Jill safely deliver her daughter and save the world before she herself loses her mind herself?
We would like to think that we do not have high standards when it comes to acting performances. As long as the acting comes out as natural, we're quite satisfied most of the time. In fact, it's been quite awhile were the acting really impacted us in a very negative way. Unfortunately, with "Awake", stale and wooden acting was at the forefront why our whole experience was ruined. In particular, Gina Rodriguez was just unconvincingly flat the whole time with a performance that just took us out of the film's apocalyptic setting time and time again. She eventually finds her footing in the latter parts of the film but the first half was really a struggle. Other than that, the film's narrative was also a disappointment. The whole premise of people being unable to sleep was fresh and interesting. But the film bascially strolls through the idea most of the way. It presented a lot of disturbing behavior from groups of people but they never give any basic context on most. Even our lead character Jill just lacked any siginificant background story to for us to truly understand her apprehension towards going to The Hub for example. This is a film that could have used a lot more running time to fully flesh out its ideas. In summary, "Awake" is decent but there's nothing to really grab your attention. Ironically, for a film talking about not being able to sleep, you might fall asleep watching this. This is like the already so-so "Bird Box" but every aspect was just a step down from cast, acting, story, and characters.
Rating: 2 reels
Why you should watch it:
- the premise was interesting
Why you shouldn't watch it:
- the film has this amateurish vibe to it
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Comments
I was thinking that too (despite the fact that I like Gina as an actress). I found her not hard enough at first, because she was a former military. But I watched it again, and I realized that Jill is not perfect,she has flaws, but she loves her children, and I think Gina didn't want to portray Jill as a tough, "Wonder Woman", but as an ordinary woman/mother who needed redemption as she had lost custody of her children, her son hated her and this film shows us that the apocalyptic event was a way for this mother and her two children to be reconciled.
ReplyDeleteI think the director wanted children to be as important in this film as Gina. He showcased Ariana Greenblatt's skills more than Gina's skills.