Gina Rodriguez battles endless insomnia in the Netflix sci-fi snoozer Awake
Prepare for another round of Unexplained Global Happening, or UGH.
Film Reviews Gina Rodriguez
Movies, TV shows, and novels about humanity contending with a sudden mysterious disruptive phenomenon are becoming so commonplace that it might be useful to coin a generic term for such weirdness. Borrowing the title of one notorious example gives us Unexplained Global Happening, or UGH. While characters will speculate at length about an UGH’s origin or nature, no concrete answer generally arrives; the dramatic emphasis is on survival, trauma, or both. Such tales invariably sport a tantalizing what-if? hook that has you eager to know more. It’s the follow-through that’s often shaky.
Awake serves up a dual UGH—one instantaneous event that somehow produces two catastrophic outcomes. (A single line of dialogue attempts to hand-wave a connection; individual suspension of disbelief will vary.) While driving home one ordinary day, Jill (Gina Rodriguez), a former military officer who’s temporarily lost custody of her two children due to a drug conviction, suddenly loses control of her car, in common with seemingly every other driver on the road. Her immediate crisis involves escaping from the vehicle with her kids (who were with her on a visitation) as it sinks to the bottom of a lake, but she and the rest of the world soon discover that every device with a electronic circuit has become inoperable, ending the digital age in one fell swoop. There’s no time to consider the enormous impact that a total power failure would have on society, though, because this particular UGH fried human circuitry as well: Jill can’t sleep that night, and neither, it emerges the next day, could anybody else. Which is a bit of a problem, since mammals that don’t sleep will die within a matter of weeks.
It’s a nifty enough premise, credited to Gregory Poirier (who previously dreamed up the less ingenious story for National Treasure: Book Of Secrets). Awake’s screenplay, however, was written by director Mark Raso and his brother, Joseph, who are in such a hurry to generate tension that they don’t let the idea breathe. Almost everyone has experienced insomnia at some point, and while it would definitely be disconcerting to learn that nobody else slept last night, either—especially in conjunction with the power outage—at least two nights of collective staring at the ceiling would likely be required before civilization began to collapse. Instead, a religious cult instantly develops around Jill’s young daughter, Matilda (Ariana Greenblatt), one of only two known people for whom unconsciousness remains an option. The crazy church folks want to sacrifice her (why this would appease God is unclear, since they also treat her as a Chosen One); the military, understandably, wants to study her, in the hope of finding a cure. Jill, on the other hand, just wants to keep her children safe, and Awake becomes the saga of a mom’s redemption.
Rodriguez works hard to make this personal angle compelling, exhibiting mama-bear ferocity, but the film’s ultra-bleak premise doesn’t cooperate. After a while, Jill becomes convinced—not without reason—that most of humanity, including herself and her teenage son, Noah (Lucius Hoyos), is doomed, and becomes intent upon finding the other person who can still sleep, hoping that this random elderly woman will raise Matilda after everyone else is dead. In other words, Jill wants to entrust her child to somebody else—the very situation she was in when the movie started. Similarly, subtext about humanity’s need to start over afresh, which gets voiced aloud at one point by a dude (Shamier Anderson) who advocates torching all the libraries so that humanity can rid itself of terrible received notions, competes with an UGH so dire that even the film’s guardedly optimistic ending mostly just inspires the question “Okay, but now what?” (Put another way, and keeping things vague, Awake’s best-case scenario lands it roughly where the average post-apocalyptic movie begins.)
The Raso brothers do throw in a few witty touches, as when Jill, having found a car that’s old enough to still work (i.e., that’s devoid of electronics), has to drive around a group of nude people standing in the middle of the road, gazing at the horizon—apparently adherents to some other insta-cult about which we otherwise learn nothing. And the film has a memorably berserk third act, cashing in on the paranoia and hallucinations that people genuinely do experience after several consecutive days without sleep (though it’s a bit convenient that this escalates in everyone simultaneously, as if a timer had gone off). But the cast struggles to find much beneath the text’s overly rushed surface—Jennifer Jason Leigh, as a military psychiatrist who specializes in sleep disorders and just happens to be Jill’s former boss, looks bored out of her skull—and there’s ultimately nothing inherently compelling about watching people not sleep, which is what constitutes 99.9% of every movie ever made (excepting Andy Warhol’s Sleep). You’ve seen better UGHs.
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Anyone else here seen the Netflix show Carmen Sandiego with Gina Rodriguez doing the voice of Carmen?
So it’s like a weekend coke binge with people who got new phones and don’t know how to use them.
. . . Jill, having found a car that’s old enough to still work (i.e., that’s devoid of electronics),I don’t necessarily expect a LOT from screenwriters, but some knowledge of technology we’ve been reliant on for a CENTURY wouldn’t be amiss.That diagram is the generator from a Model T Ford, taken from a page entitled “Model T Ford Electrical System”. ( https://www.modeltcentral.com/Model-T-Ford-Electrical-Specifications.html ) Even back before they had electrical headlamps or starters, back when you had to start the engine with a hand crank, the cars relied on electrical ignition.There is a big advantage of blaming the UGH on demons from Hell or some such. If you say up front “A wizard did it,” there’s no expectation of internal logic, and you can get right to the child threatening and mama bearing and whatnot.
Wait, I’m missing this, does the film claim that no electricity works at all, such as no more lightning or static from carpets, or is it no more electronics, such as transistors and chip devices?
Er, but electrical systems aren’t necessarily electronic systems? The latter typically being characterized by using integrated circuits (transistors, etc.) as opposed to just using electricity.
( https://kinja.com/daveassist is greyed here, but I got a notification that ‘e replied “Wait, I’m missing this, does the film claim that no electricity works at all, such as no more lightning or static from carpets, or is it no more electronics, such as transistors and chip devices?”)Dunno. From the trailer:Satellites fall out of the sky (which is another rant about orbital mechanics right there), newer cars stop and can’t restart, the electrical grid crashes… Apart from the pre-1687 understanding of what keeps satellites from bonking our heads, it’s the sort of thing I’d expect from a nuclear electromagnetic pulse ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse ), which kills unshielded microchips, some delicate microelectronics, and some really big electrical components like gear attached to kilometers-long power lines—but which is less likely to damage compact brute-force electronics and electromechanical systems.However, since a completely unrelated thing also happens to mumble billion people—humans do NOT use electrical circuits internally, nerve impulses are waves of ions migrating perpendicular to the impulse’s direction of travel—a wizard did it.
Diesel engines rely on compression ignition rather than spark, so perhaps push-starting an old Benz or VW would work?
It’s an interesting question. Specifically for an EMP, the gearheads ( https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1112148-diesel-year-with-no-electronics-in-engine-2.html ) simultaneously point out (A) engines, diesel or gasoline, have a LOT of fiddly little electrical and electromechanical components in unexpected places, but (B) automobiles aren’t instant-death vulnerable to EMPs in the first place, and (C) a metal shed is a Faraday cage, and there will always be some vehicles stored in them.
How about a diesel with mechanical fuel injection? I can’t imagine this film bothered with the distinction, but this is a thing, isn’t it? Also there’s a difference between “electronics” and “electrics”. A spinning magnet should still generate electricity, right? And spark plugs aren’t “electronic”, they are just a thing that makes a spark when you put electricity in one end.
Hell, Star Trek did this already. TNG episode 4.17, “Night Terrors”.
So Norman’s catchphrase is an Unexplained Global Happening?
Prepare for another round of Unexplained Global Happening, or UGH.Useful terminology for a useful concept. Hear, hear.
I swear I read this book about 10 years ago.
I finally remembered what the book was called that was a similar concept: Nod! And I really did like the book.
C minus? More like Z plus! amirite?!?
So, it’s World War Zzzzzzzz.
Black MoonRead the book Black Moon. Similar idea, but good.
Funny to see Gina Rodriguez & Jennifer Jason Leigh are in another film again. Makes me want to see Annihilation again.
Why did the AED still work if all electricity was fried?How did nobody realize that ‘was dead for a minute’ was what set the old woman apart?Why does a veteran need ‘a book on map reading’ to figure out coordinatesI like this genre, that’s more about the impact of a catastrofe on society than about finding the solution. But less is more: the movie would probably have been better if it was only about sleep (although intact communication would presumably reveal sleeping people from many hospitals from many countries)
I watched this recently and a C- is generous. From starting out mediocre, it quickly feel apart into nonsense. Just because everyone is tired doesn’t mean I should feel the same. Spoiler below:After making it to the end, I too would want to just start shooting. To spice things up.