Directed by Mark Raso and starring Gina Rodriguez, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Barry Pepper and former Iron Fist Finn Jones, Awake is another timely “pandemic” thriller in which on this occasion a solar flare affects human brains and causes insomnia. Coma patients are suddenly awake, no one in the world (apparently) is unconscious, and the prognosis is that everyone is destined to die from “accelerated insomnia.” It’s an unsettling and disturbing premise and one which Awake singularly fails to exploit and a situation that it’s almost completely unable to bring to the screen with any sense of believability.
Few will remember a shamefully ignored American genre series from 2016 entitled Day 5 which dealt with similar themes with much more conviction and with far better – and often genuinely horrifying – results. This was a wild-eyed, desperate, and occasionally uncomfortable series whose heroes actually looked completely knackered and on the edge of collapse (if people fell asleep they never woke up again) in their race against time to find both a cure and drugs that will keep them awake beyond the ‘five day’ limit of human endurance without sleep. Awake manages none of this and comes across like a rather routine, low-budget thriller with no compelling sense of urgency or panic and with a cast who don’t look even remotely weary let alone driven to the point of absolute exhaustion. An unsympathetic and largely uninteresting cast of characters doesn’t really help. Jane the Virgin star Rodriguez plays Jill, a former US Army medic and recovering drug addict who steals drugs from the college where she works as a security guard to sell to local low-lifes. After picking up her two kids Noah and Matilda, Jill’s car suddenly loses power, and following a collision with another vehicle it ends up in a lake. It later transpires that Matilda can actually sleep and the family are soon on the run from religious fanatics determined to sacrifice Matilda and soldiers driven insane from sleep deprivation.
Awake rarely gets out of first gear and throws away any potential inherent in its storyline thanks to drab acting, unimaginative direction, and a script that often seems half-asleep itself. The film obviously focusses on Jill’s plight but there’s no real sense that this is a terrifying worldwide threat – no one really looks especially exhausted and the lack of sleep seems like a minor inconvenience most of the time – and the story trundles through its very nuts and bolts motions without any particular dramatic impetus. The twist that potentially resolves the situation is likely to briefly reignite your interest in the film but ultimately Awake really isn’t worth staying up for and you’d be better off enjoying a hearty and refreshing forty winks.
Awake is available now on Netflix
