The Awakening
(2011) 107 Min.
Rated: R (implied sex, nude butt, minimal gore)
Country: UK
Starring: Rebecca Hall, Dominic West, Imelda Staunton
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Ghost hoax explorer Florence Cathcart visits a boarding school and questions her beliefs in The Awakening.
Synopsis:
It’s 1921 in England and Florence Cathcart (Hall) exposes another charlatan pretending to be a medium. Florence is is a well known author of a book which dismisses the existence of ghosts and instead relies on reason and science to prove paranormal phenomenon as nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
After a successful case she comes home find a teacher named Robert Mallory (West) wishes her to go to his school. The school matron is a fan of Florence and all the school boys believe that a ghost is haunting the boarding school. There has even been a recent death. Florence at first refuses to go, but ultimately takes a train there as the boys will be away from school for a while as it is half-term.
After an initial investigation, Florence finds that some of the ghostly sightings were pranks played by the boys. That the boy’s death was likely caused by one of the teachers scaring him further trying to get him to “Man up” and triggering an asthma attack.
Case seemingly over, all of the children go on their trips home with their parents except for Tom who is left in care of the school matron Maud Hill (Staunton). Florence is about to go home when she sees a hand in the pond, gets scared and faints into the pond. Robert saves her but after hearing and seeing unexplained things she decides to stay at the school longer. Now the only people at the school are Florence, Robert, Maud, Tom and a groundskeeper named Edward Judd.
Tom and Florence talk a bit and she explains that her parents died while she was a child living in Africa. She was captured by a lion and rescued and the natives called her “Mawa Zee” which she explains meant “white doll”. Later on Florence sees fleeting glances of the ghost and starts to chase him in front of cameras she has set up. She suddenly sees a man with a shotgun pointed at her and she backs up horrified, tripping the camera wires, causing them to go off.
Florence decides to develop the photos and in the last one sees a blurred image of a ghost-child. She suddenly believes in ghosts. Florence and Robert suddenly start to grow passionate upon this revelation and have sex.
Soon after this Florence goes outside and runs into Edward Judd who is jealous of Robert being a WWI veteran and receiving Florance’s affections. He knocks her out, drags her into the forest and attempts to rape her when suddenly a ghost boy pops in and scares him. Florence grabs Judd’s gun and hits him with it, apparently killing him. She runs to tell Robert and Maud. She asks Robert not to tell Tom. Robert basically tells her that there’s no one else there except for Maud, Florence and himself. Meaning, of course, that all along Tom was a ghost.
Robert goes off to bury dead Edward Judd and Florence starts to explore the house and talk to Tom and realize that all along she was suppressing memories. In reality she was a girl who lived in that house years ago and was with her half-brother Tom. Her father and mother were arguing. Her father wanted a son from her mother, as Tom was a bastard son. Her father then shot her mother. While hunting for Florence to kill her, he’d call out for “mousie” which was her nickname. Her father then shot through the wall and accidentally killed his beloved son Tom.
After realizing he killed Tom, he killed himself. Florence was left alone to cope. And apparently she repressed all of this memory. Very few people can see Tom. Maud is Tom’s mother and was Florence’s nanny. It was Maud who arranged for Florence to come to the school in hopes that she would remember everything. Maud also poisons herself and Florence so that they can both join Tom in the afterlife.
As she is growing sick, Florence tells Tom that she cannot be happy if she dies like this. Tom then gives her a medicine to induce vomiting. Florence survives, but can no longer see Tom. Robert also helps Florence to recover.
Review:
This film was beautifully shot. The music was beautiful, the sets were wonderful, the costumes were really nice too. However, the plot twist felt so contrived and cheap. I guess I could have bought that a skeptic suddenly decides to waver in her skepticism on the basis of one grainy photo. But then there were things like the odd yearning and sex right after the ghost photo. This film felt so much like a period piece that it seemed to forget it was a thriller or a ghost story.
Of course, the sudden realization that all along Florence was the daughter of that home. That Tom had been a ghost all along. It was so jarring and left a lot of questions. So I suppose Maud would just fold a blanket over nothing in front of the other boys as she tucked her ghost-son into bed. How Maud supposedly egged Tom on to scare Florence so that she would continue to investigate and not leave the house. What kind of mother of a dead son would just make her ghost-son do errands? It seems really weird.
There was probably too much unbelievably strange behavior that ruined the movie, which was an otherwise beautifully shot and costumed period drama. I suppose if you can ignore weird glaring plot twists like that, it should be a good movie to see. At it’s very core if felt utterly and unapologetically British.
