Awake (2021)

Starring: Gina Rodriguez, Ariana Greenblatt, Lucius Hoyos, Shamier Anderson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Finn Jones, Frances Fisher, Gil Bellows, Barry Pepper
Directed by: Mark Raso
Rating: TV-MA
Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama
2021

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A mysterious event impacts the globe, preventing people from being able to fall asleep. A woman (Gina Rodriguez) fights to protect her kids, including her daughter (Ariana Greenblatt) who is miraculously able to sleep.

Review:

Tim: 2021's Awake takes an interesting premise and completely squanders it. This is yet another subpar Netflix movie. There might be a few decent ideas in this film, but the execution of those ideas doesn't work. This ends up being a fairly forgettable film in every sense.
br> The big idea in Awake is that some mysterious event occurs which prevents people from falling asleep. This is actually pretty cool. That might not seem like a big deal, but if humanity couldn't sleep, our brains would soon stop functioning. It would mean the end of humanity as we know it. As you would anticipate, governments and scientists launch a full scale scientific inquiry to discover the cause and hopefully, a cure. There's also some exploration of how the religious would respond. These are all decent enough ideas, but they are packaged in such a way that everything about this film feels generic. That's the biggest complaint I have- nothing feels distinct or unique about this film. Much of it seems to be going through the motions. It's never quite a bad movie, but it's a very uninspired one.

Gina Rodriguez is decent in the lead role, but I really believe she's more of a supporting actress. She can be really strong in small doses. The movie presents a big cast so it's never all on Rodriguez to carry the movie (a wise decision), but her large role exposes some of her acting limitations. She's fine, but not a true star. Ariana Greenblatt and Lucius Hoyos were solid as her children. Neither gives a breakthrough performance, but I didn't have many faults with her performances. I've been really impressed with Shamier Anderson and he gives another great performance here. The movie certainly gets better when he comes on screen. As you'd expect, I wish he had a bigger role. Jennifer Jason Leigh is such a talented actress and gives an effective supporting turn here. Her role is pretty small, but the movie is better because she's in it. It was fun seeing Finn Jones here. I'm familiar with him through his work on Game of Thrones and Iron Fist, so it was nice seeing him in a feature film. He was fairly solid in a small role. I love Barry Pepper and he was effective, just in a minor supporting role. As a whole, the cast was solid- that's the best part of the film.

One of the interesting aspects of the film involves the question of why some people can fall asleep while the majority of humanity cannot. This drives much of the plot and suspense. There's a fairly effective sequence involving the religious in a church that creates some frightening moments. This feels less like an admonition on religion and more like a compelling illustration of what happens to our brains without sleep. The characters in this scene act bizarrely, illogically, and yet, it makes sense within the context of the movie. The idea of people acting funny without sleep is obvious to understand, but to truly comprehend the ramifications of this, we needed sequences like this. That was one of the most memorable scenes of the film.

I thought the conclusion of the movie was especially weak. The resolution feels forced and generic. There's some cool action scenes towards the climax, but the movie peters out after that. This is a movie that feels like it used up all its intelligence in the basic ideas and there wasn't enough left over to tell a compelling story. The film ends and it's never as cool as the movie believes it is. It was a bit of relief when it ended. Awake isn't a bad movie- I never hated it, not for a second. It's just a forgettable, generic one. Netflix has had a lot of these in recent years.



Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating- 6



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Birdbox, Blindness, A Quiet Place