Awake

Directed by Mark Raso, Awake follows Gina Rodriguez’s Jill Adams as she attempts to keep her children (Ariana Greenblatt’s Matilda and Lucius Hoyos’ Noah) safe after most of humanity is no longer able to sleep. It’s an intriguing premise that is, by and large, employed to absolutely disastrous effect by Raso, as the filmmaker, working from a script written with Joseph Raso, delivers a sluggish and often astoundingly generic thriller that boasts few, if any, compelling, interesting elements – with the picture’s myriad of problems compounded by its emphasis on characters of a decidedly bland and forgettable nature. (This is particularly true of Rodriguez’s ineffective and entirely charisma-free turn as the far-too-gruff central protagonist.) The movie’s pervasively uninvolving nature is perpetuated by a ramshackle plot that contains far too many inconsistencies and less-than-believable turns to comfortably overlook, including the reveal that society has essentially turned barbaric after just one sleepless night, and there’s little doubt, as well, that Awake suffers from a low-rent, far-from-fresh visual sensibility that does the interminable proceedings absolutely no favors. The endless third act, which is hindered by a seriously incoherent and incompetent action sequence, ensures that the whole thing finally concludes on just about as anticlimactic a note as one could possibly envision, with the final result an uncommonly misguided piece of work that’s rarely, if ever, able to live up to the promise of its seemingly foolproof setup.

* out of ****