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> REVIEW

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The Awakening  (2011)

 

Sometimes dead does not mean gone…

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By Helen Adkins | November 2011

 

 

DIRECTOR: Nick Murphy 

WRITER(s): Stephen Volk/Nick Murphy

 

Successful ghost stories are notoriously difficult to produce on screen, usually because they rely less on the jumps and bumps of the horror and thriller genre, and more on the inner psychological aspects of their characters.  Strip away the ghosts from Jack Clayton’s The Innocents or Robert Wise’s The Haunting and we are still left with powerful character studies of a woman’s repressed sexuality.

 

Nick Murphy’s The Awakening also deals with his protagonist’s inner journey; guilt, grief and repressed sexuality, set in the middle years between the World Wars. Rebecca Hall plays Florence Cathcart, a no-nonsense, externally tough spiritualist debunker whose goal in life is to catch the charlatan mediums feeding off the nation’s grief for their dead men folk.  When she’s asked by Robert Mallory (Dominic West) to look into ghostly sightings in a Cumbrian boarding school, she agrees.

 

Florence goes about her business in her usual matter of fact way, setting up machinery and the tricks of the trade to catch the hoaxer she believes responsible for the sightings of a ghostly boy and at least one death.

 

At first, her work is pretty straightforward, until strange things happen that even she can’t explain.  The scares are subtle (those eerily tinkling bells) but effective as Florence quickly spirals into a shivering wreck.  Sadly, at this point, something strange also happens to the plot, which instead of focussing in on its protagonist, flails around, creating a host of red herrings and clues no doubt designed to distract away from the final reveal.  

 

There are a few truly spine-tingling moments; when Florence discovers a model house of the school containing exact re-enactments of her movements, for instance.  Yet the fact that she does not mention this enormous demonic dolls-house to anyone else in the house is totally baffling.  Other creepy moments come straight off the A-Z ghost story checklist – when the ghost boy comes up to grab her hand in water, or the fact that he has a smudged face feel particularly familiar.

 

The Awakening has so much more potential than many of the run-of-the-mill offerings in recent years.  The themes of post war guilt and grief are thoughtful and have much to offer were they not bogged down with the director’s determination to set up spooky scenes regardless of relevance.

 

Frustratingly, much of the second half feels like filler before the contrived final reveal, which stretches the limits of credulity and makes only the most tenuous connection with what has been going on previously.

 

Imelda Staunton plays the creepy housekeeper Maud Hill with her usual skill, but Hall stretches belief at times as the no-nonsense cynic, while Dominic West simply picks at a scab to illustrate his survivor guilt.  

 

It’s an entertaining film, nonetheless, and a treat visually, yet its disparate nature means it fails to really connect on an emotional level, thus making it nothing more than a decent ghost story.

 

Script…………………………………………………………………………………………….

 

Written by Stephen Volk and (rewritten by) Nick Murphy, The Awakening 

suffers from exposition and rushed plotting, resulting in clunky performances.

 3

 

Direction………………………………………………………………………………………..

 

Impressive production values and well shot, but surprisingly lacking in heart.  

Too many cynical ploys to create creepiness without the requisite

characterisation and development.  3

 

 

Verdict…………………………………………………………………………………………..

 

Some genuine spine-tingling moments but not enough to save it from the

contrived final act.  3

 

 

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