The Awakening ? a movie review. | forestfae

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Cast

Rebecca Hall as Florence Cathcart
Dominic West as Robert Malory
Imelda Staunton as Maud Hill
Lucy Cohu as Constance Strickland
John Shrapnel as Reverend Hugh Purslow
Diana Kent as Harriet Cathcart
Richard Durden as Alexander Cathcart
Alfie Field as Victor Parry
Sidney Johnston as John Franklin
Tilly Vosburgh as Vera Flood
Ian Hanmore as Albert Flood
Cal Macaninch as Freddie Strickland
Isaac Hempstead-Wright as Tom
Anastasia Hille as Katherine Vandermeer
Andrew Havill as George Vandermeer
Joseph Mawle as Edward Judd

[edit] Production

The Awakening was shot on location in the United Kingdom in London, Berwickshire, Lyme Park near Stockport and Manderston House in Manderston from July 2010.[2]
[edit] Release

The film opened at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 16, 2011[3] and has been officially released November 11, 2011 in the United Kingdom and Ireland[4] and December 2, 2011 in Italy.
[edit] Critical Response

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 71% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 24 reviews, with an average score of 5.8/10.

Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph stated, ?Rarely does a horror film make the back of your neck tingle with the calibre of its performances as well as its jumps and jolts ? but The Awakening, a beautifully mounted ghost story in the style of The Turn of the Screw, provides chills of both kinds.?

The movie is set in 1921 England where Florence Cathcart (Rebecca Hall) is a published author on supernatural hoaxes who works with the police to expose charlatans and debunk supernatural phenomenon, having begun her foray into her profession upon the death of her lover in World War I. Upon a visit from Robert Malory (Dominic West), a teacher from a boarding school with the request to investigate the recent death of a student and how it is related to sightings of a ghost of a child, she travels to the school hoping to explain the sightings and the death. The ghostly sightings are at first thought to be a prank played by one of the boys at the school. ? Wikipedia

If you enjoyed movies like The Others with Nicole Kidman, and Haunted starring Aidan Quin and Kate Beckinsale, you will really enjoy the Awakening. We watched it last night and it is a stylish thriller more so than an outright horror with many twists and turns that keep you wondering almost right up to the end. Dominic West is the star of this film, his understated performance is chilling.

For those of you that have seen ghosts (real ones not the movie variety), and especially the kind that you don?t outright recognize as ghost when you first see them..watch this movie if you like a good chill.
It also made me remember (yep here we go, if you are only reading this post for the movie review, stop reading NOW, if you like a bit of a ghost story, do read on) a experience I had a few years ago. Art does imitate life really well in this movie

I was in a smallish mall with a friend, we were just meandering about and basically doing window shopping. My friend went into a shop, and I decided to wait outside for her, and whilst doing so I was looking at the display in the window of the next little shop.

I felt a soft tap on my shoulder, and as I turned around, there was a man in his late 50?s who politely asked me if I have seen his son. He took out an old black and white 70?s looking photo of a young man who bore a strong resemblance to him. He looked deep into my eyes, as if searching for the answers. By then my friend have come out of the shop, and she joined us. She asked the slightly lost looking man if he needed help or assistance as she shot me a knowing glance..the type that says ? he must have senile dementia or Alzheimer?s or something?. I shook my head and mimed ?listen? to her.

He told how his wife dropped him off at the mall everyday at the same time, and that he is there to look for his son who disappeared many years ago, and now it seems his wife of late is starting to forget to pick him up regularly too. By then I realised that the man standing in front of us and talking to us was a ghost, and a lost and confused one at that. My friend, who did not believe in ?ghosts and psychic mumbo jumbo? as she called it, grabbed my arm because by then she realised something was really wrong too. In that moment that I turned towards her, the man vanished, my friend saw him vanish and described it as the man just ?winking out like a light that was switched off?.

I knew before then, but only ever in retrospect, that I have mistaken ghosts for the living, but this was a first for me too. One actually walking up to me and asking for assistance.

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