In Bird Box, people wear blindfolds to avoid seeing a mysterious force that makes you kill yourself. In Only, ash from a comet containing a virus kills all the women in the world…well, almost all. In A Quiet Place 2, a flaming object hits earth and brings blind crab-like monsters that kill you if you make a sound. In Greenland, a planet-killing comet is hurtling toward earth and a small number of people head to a purportedly underground bunker. In The Midnight Sky, a lone Arctic researcher must warn a spaceship heading home that the Earth is wiped out and uninhabitable. And now in Awake, a solar flare fries the Earth’s electronic systems and prevents people from sleeping.
Jill (Gina Rodriguez – Jane the Virgin) picks her kids up at school and crashes the car when the electronics are knocked out. No one can sleep, nothing works, and satellites are burning up in the sky. Daughter Matilda (Ariana Greenblatt) can sleep which makes her a frenzied object for religious and scientific purposes. The family heads toward the Hub, a research facility working on a cure headed by Dr. Murphy (Jennifer Jason Leigh – The Hateful Eight). It is while there that they discover why Matilda is able to sleep and no one else can. A sizable chunk of the movie is this road trip to the Hub through the chaos of an increasingly sleepless society. Humans can not go without sleep for days and function. The film shows why punishment by sleep deprivation is considered torture.
Awake is a serviceable addition to the apocalyptic film catalog. Gina Rodriguez is strong and believable as the mother trying to save her children while exhausted and delirious. Ariana Greenblatt carries her critical role quite well for a child in these circumstances. Jennifer Jason Leigh, on the other hand, seems underused, and while on screen seems exceptionally grumpy even given the situation. After all, she is the sleep expert psychiatrist. I found it strange that immediately after the power shutdown, people became desperate and resigned to a permanent state of sleeplessness and disaster. A massive blackout of electronics, yes, but why exactly does it make everyone unable to sleep? This is why sometimes it’s more effective in these movies to leave the apocalyptic event unknown. Before we get to the trailer below, let’s check out some upcoming post-apocalyptic movies based on books.
Three good books are being brought to the screen. The film rights have just been confirmed for The Dog Stars; Peter Heller’s story about a man named Hig who has survived the flu pandemic in an abandoned airplane hangar with his dog and a scary, old guy that’s good to have around. Also, HBO Max is making a miniseries based upon Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven; a tale of nomadic actors roaming the Great Lakes region after a flu has destroyed much of civilization. And Netflix will be making the film adapting Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam; a subtle, unsettling book about a family and another couple holed up together facing an unknown threat to the human race. It’s being directed by Sam Esmail (Homecoming, Mr. Robot) and starring, ugh, who was it, oh yeah, Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts. Maybe it’s a good thing that these productions are all a ways off. We need a break from pandemic movies after just living through one ourselves.
D² Rating ◼◼◩☐☐
Trivia ? – Which two Walking Dead characters crossed over into the Fear the Walking Dead series?
Answer: Morgan and Dwight, played by Lennie James and Austin Amelio, respectively.