by Charles Kirkland, Jr.
An unknown phenomenon causes the power to go out and stops people from falling asleep in the Netflix drama, Awake.
Jill (Gina Rodriguez) is an ex-soldier who has fought her way out of addiction and is trying to reconnect with her children. So what that she is dealing prescription medication on the side that she steals from the trash from the treatment facility where she works? Jill is a fighter trying to survive. One day while driving her son Noah (Lucius Hoyos) and daughter Matilda (Ariana Greenblatt) home for one of her unsupervised visits, the power in the car mysteriously shuts off, along with all the other cars on the road. After escaping the crash, Jill returns her children to their grandmother’s home and tries to rest for her next shift. She chalks up her inability to sleep to adrenaline from the crash and says goodbye to her son and sleeping daughter as she goes off to work. Only then does she realize that the world is truly changed because no one can go to sleep. Now Jill must fight to protect her daughter, Matilda, from a world that needs to be able to do what she can.
Awake is a Netflix movie that stars Rodriguez, Hoyos, and Greenblatt along with Jennifer Jason Leigh, Shamier Anderson, Finn Jones, Frances Fisher, and Barry Pepper. The screenplay for Awake is written by Joseph Raso and Mark Raso (Kodachrome) from a story by Gregory Poirier (Rosewood, The Spy Next Door). Interestingly, both of the Raso’s have had successful and completely different career paths, this is the first time that they have worked together. Maybe because Jason’s work has been mostly on movies made for television (the Z-O-M-B-I-E-S franchise for Disney) that he allows Mark to direct this feature.
Speaking of Disney, Ariana Greenblatt (Disney’s Stuck in the Middle) who has been already named one of the young stars to watch for is tremendous in this movie. She displays a range that is beyond belief. She starts Matilda as naïve and loving and subtly grows her into a smart and strong savior in a way that harkens to John Conner’s growth in Terminator 2.
The analogy holds with Rodriguez playing Jill. Much like Sarah Connor, Jill is trying to escape a past that haunts her while trying to protect her children from the coming apocalypse. But as she fights to save her children, she finds herself drawn back into the past that she never seems to be able to escape.
All in all, Awake seems very familiar, carrying all the good themes from movies like T2 and more recently Birdbox into a sci-fi drama that is quickly paced, mildly thrilling, and mostly predictable after the first act. Rodriguez and Jenifer Jason Leigh also both stared in Annihilation and probably brought some of their characters from that movie as well.
Rated TV-MA for scenes of nudity, violence, some language, and frightening and intense scenes, Awake is an interestingly crafted, yet extremely familiar ride into the Apocalypse. Despite above-average acting, the story is not as tight as it should be and the action is a little tame. The cinematography is good though, like a screensaver when your computer sleeps.
Awake is available only on Netflix.
Grade: C