Review – Awake (2021) is a beautiful mix of science fiction and psychological thriller Cinemax
Special thanks to the Horror Fix employee Travis Taylor for providing the review!
Nothing ruins a movie for me like bad, unbelievable science, action scenes that are poorly choreographed to make actors without weapons training appear “ninja-like,” and outdated old “fear” formulas. Fortunately, “Awake” is not one of these films! Awake is indeed a nice mix of sci-fi psychological thriller and, if you’re a parent, a horror film.
Awake is about an “event” that disables most modern scientific equipment, cars, telephones, etc., and prevents everyone from sleeping except for a rapidly dying old woman and our heroine’s young daughter. It’s a race against time to stay alive and find a cure (with the only two “sleepers” serving as guinea pigs).
Our heroine (Gina Rodriguez, who did a great job!) immediately realizes that she’s a former military and security guard single mom trying to make ends meet by working all night long and selling expired, stolen drugs on the side…because who doesn’t do that to make a little extra money? Am i right?
After picking up her children from her mother-in-law (who we know doesn’t want her to have much time with the children), the “event” occurs and, after a very believable account of the results of some sort of EMP (electromagnetic pulse) discharge, her car is hit by an out-of-control truck and thrown into a body of water.
She manages to get her children out and save herself, but when she surfaces we find that her daughter (Ariana Grenblatt, who was also very convincing) has drowned and the rescue workers are trying to bring her back to life. One of my favorite scenes is when she takes her kids to the hospital and tells them that her daughter was hurt and a nurse looks at her daughter and asks something like, “Are you okay, sweetie?” and when the girl answers “yes,” the nurse looks at the mother, says “she’s fine,” and walks away. The crisis brings out the professionalism in all of us!
Afterwards we have a society of people partying in the streets like it’s 1999! Until the effects of sleep deprivation begin to make themselves felt, and that’s when the films start to get to the core of the reality we would be faced with if this had happened in real life
Celebration turns into panic, panic turns into fear, fear turns into chaos and then it’s gangster gangs, stumbled drug dealers, dead cops on the street and total, unbridled chaos and mayhem caused by sleepless, hallucinating “normal people” who lose their minds. Our heroine is not immune and we see her undergo cognitive and memory tests throughout the film that serve as a measure of how advanced she is. A testament to her military training and her determination to keep her children alive.
One of the most striking points I took away from the film was that the mother is constantly trying to teach her daughter to do the things she needs to stay alive because she will soon be alone. It was kind of an eye opener for me, and it should be for most other parents too. You won’t be able to be there for her forever; And when the world descends into chaos, you may not have much time to teach them how to stay alive without you.
Overall, “Awake” is based on the fears of many people in society that EMPs could affect our country, as well as our fears that a government and a society could go crazy and quickly turn into animal-like killers, but also that we are ill-prepared for such an event and have to live in constant fear of what comes next and the future of our children. I couldn’t find anything wrong with this film and suggest you take some time and watch it.
