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''Am I supposed to still hear you?''
The story focuses on a man who suffers "anesthetic awareness" and finds himself awake and aware, but paralyzed, during heart surgery. His mother must wrestle with her own demons as a drama unfolds around them, while trying to unfold the story hidden behind her son's young wife.
Hayden Christensen: Clay Beresford
Awake, the thriller by first-time director Joby Harold, takes off from a grisly real-life phenomenon called anesthetic awareness. This is when patients are unaccountably left fully conscious — and physically paralyzed — during the process of surgery, thus Harold, whom also wrote the script, has spun a preposterously entertaining web from this grisly germ of an idea, and manages to hold us in a vice-like grip for pretty much the entire length of the ordeal. How often can you say of a Hollywood thriller that you don't have a clue what's going to happen next? Awake is brazenly indifferent to plausibility, but you can't help but admire the film's audacity. Along with unique plot twists, Harold throws Hitchcock-esque flourishes and elements of Greek tragedy into the mix like a crazed chef adding ingredients to a new dish. .
Harold brings energy and focus to the scenes that he transcends the subject matter and gives it an almost surreal intensity, and the performances are strong enough to keep the film's evolution from capsizing it. Jessica Alba is suitably luscious and beguiling (her role gives new meaning to the term heartbreaker), and Lena Olin and Terence Howard are both in fine form. As the unfortunate victim of anesthetic awareness, Hayden Christensen comes into his own as a performer (having mercifully managed to escape the Mark Hamil curse: that of being horribly miscast by George Lucas). Christensen has an unusually expressive face (the camera takes to him), and he can convey emotion without ever appearing to do much—fortunately, because the film hinges around his internal struggle, and on our feelings of empathy for him.
Awake is a white-knuckle movie experience if ever there was one (it even carries a viewer warning), with some of the most sheerly visceral scenes of horror ever committed to celluloid. Watching someone undergoing open-heart surgery while fully conscious (and able to feel the incision) is enough to frazzle the nerves of the most hardened horror veterans, and this film is certainly not for the squeamish. Too bad the loopy plot (and the melodramatic character revelations, which are really just tired genre conventions) finally stretches our credibility to breaking point. As a result, Awake lacks a strong climax, and as a roller-coaster ride it doesn't have enough emotional depth to be fully engaging. But for most of its length it's close to a pop classic, and probably the best metaphysical story around. In fact, Harold better watch out or he may wind up as the next M. Night Shyamalan, which is not necessarily a good thing. Awake has so many twists it makes you dizzy, as if you are the one going for surgery.
''I think my new heart will love you as much as my old one.''
6/10
