Awake

 

 

Joby Harold’s Awake, in its opening titles, explains the phenomenon of “anaesthetic awareness”, whereby a patient retains consciousness of events around them whilst under general aesthetic, often whilst having painful and intrusive surgery performed. Such forms the horrific situation for young, successful hotshot Clay Beresford (Hayden Christensen), who undergoes a heart transplant, and in his consciousness, uncovers a sinister murder plot against him. A crazy premise? You couldn’t be any more on the money.

 

The first mistake that this film makes is to establish the eye-rollingly loving relationship between Clay and his fiancé, Samantha (Jessica Alba), which feels like something written for an under-funded daytime direct-to-TV film. Whilst this romantic dynamic is dwelled on for far too long, the subsequent tension leading up to the transplant is admittedly effective, thanks to his friend and doctor, Jack (Terence Howard) informing him that there is a very real chance that he will expire whilst under the knife.

Where Harold (the writer as well as director of the film) falls shortest is with his insistence to drum up a plethora of cretinous characters, none moreso than Clay himself. In a silly subplot, Clay wishes for Jack to perform his surgery, despite the fact that he has four malpractice lawsuits on his record, and a replacement, who has operated on Presidents and written textbooks, is available. It is therefore difficult to in any meaningful way identify with Clay when he so flagrantly defies logic in the name of friendship. In short: Clay is a fool beyond all tangible proportions, and his rebuke to this clearly superior doctor, that “He’s my friend, I trust him”, is as inane a strand of dialogue as you will feast your ears upon this year.

 

The accompanying familial interjections are likewise onerous – Clay spends far too much time pottering about, wondering whether to inform his mother of his engagement to Samantha. When the scene shifts to an impromptu marriage in the middle of the night, I found myself wondering when things were going to move to the operating table, and considering whether the emotional meat hook Harold attempted to sink was going to ensure our protagonist’s survival.

The procedural drama is sigh-inducing, and considering that Awake chimes in at a trim 78 minutes without credits, taking over thirty of them before the anaesthesia is administered is ludicrous. The means of expressing Clay’s thoughts once he is entombed within his own cerebrum is by no means an easy directorial decision, and the voice-over technique used appears to be the only feasible way, even if it does seem a tad clumsy. There is, admittedly, a certain, legitimate terror in hearing Clay’s screams as doctors slice his chest open and his body remains stationary (even if it is, at times, unintentionally hilarious).

This unfamiliar filmic territory allows an exploration of Clay’s mind, conjuring images of his own supposed funeral, for example. This would have been an effective technique had it not been rather sloppily executed, interacting with the present action in the operation room in absolutely ridiculous, near-transcendental fashion. Clay’s attempts to “hide” in his memories to escape the pain of the surgery is a novel and unique idea, yet it is never fully capitalised on, and is largely a failed, mis-utilised mechanic.

One gains an impression by the beginning of the final act that Awake would have served better as an episode of The Twilight Zone or, dare I say, Tales from the Crypt. As well as the insufferable build-up, we are thrown a wealth of cumbersome background information, the majority of which is analogous, but nevertheless unnecessary to the film’s narrative, serving as superfluous, yet sadly essential padding.

 

Awake is not without its occasional moments of genuine surprise, such as a twist introduced near the climax of the picture (albeit an utterly ridiculous one). I found myself genuinely shocked at such a curiously untelegraphed move (for a Hollywood production), and more to the point, Harold's choice not to back-pedal on this when it came for the film’s final payoff. Harold toys with our conception of reality (and moreover, constructed reality), and I thought I could see what was coming, but was never entirely sure due to the constant sea-saw between what is real and what is (or as the case may be, is not) hallucinatory.

There are some impressive techniques to be found when we walk around in Clay’s mind, particularly in the film’s latter stages, yet too often does it dive headlong into the over-existential and recondite, becoming very silly in the process, as well as abusing every medical regulation (sanitary and otherwise) known to man.

Nobody, I think, will complain that Awake is predictable, but a promising, if inherently clunky idea is protracted to the point of absurdity, posturing ideas of the collective consciousness and the otherworldly. I was left considering whether everything but the final shot should have been one of Clay’s anaesthetic-induced hallucinations. Awake is not without its effective moments, and it provides a number of surprises, but Joby Harold has a length to go as a writer, and as a director he needs to refine his craft also. The performances are more tolerable than they need to be, but they are merely that – Alba is typical eye candy, Howard is generally above such material (and it shows), and Christensen ranges from bland when attempting dramatic range, to laughable when screaming in agony.