| The Awakening | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Nick Murphy |
| Screenplay by | Stephen Volk Nick Murphy |
| Starring | Rebecca Hall Dominic West Imelda Staunton |
| Music by | Daniel Pemberton |
| Cinematography | Eduard Grau |
| Editing by | Victoria Boydell |
| Studio | BBC Films StudioCanal UK Creative Scotland |
| Distributed by | StudioCanal UK |
| Release date(s) | 11 November 2011 (UK) |
| Running time | 107 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | £3.1 million[1] |
The Awakening is a 2011 British horror film directed by Nick Murphy, starring Rebecca Hall, Dominic West, and Imelda Staunton.
Contents |
1921 England is overwhelmed by the loss and grief of World War I. Hoax exposer Florence Cathcart (Hall) visits a boarding school to explain sightings of a child ghost. Everything she know inside unravels, as the 'missing' begin to show themselves.
The Awakening was shot on location in the United Kingdom in London, Berwickshire, Lyme Park near Stockport and Manderston House in Manderston from July 2010.[2]
The film opened at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 16, 2011 and has been officially released November 11, 2011 in the United Kingdom and Ireland[3] and December 2, 2011 in Italy.
Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 71% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 24 reviews, with an average score of 5.8/10.
Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph stated, "Rarely does a horror film make the back of your neck tingle with the calibre of its performances as well as its jumps and jolts – but The Awakening, a beautifully mounted ghost story in the style of The Turn of the Screw, provides chills of both kinds. England, 1921: Florence (Rebecca Hall), a rational debunker of spiritualists, is summoned by Dominic West to look into some spooky goings-on at his remote boys’ school. Aided by the matron (Imelda Staunton), Florence investigates – and finds the school’s problems may not be rationally debunkable. It’s scary in itself to think that, five whole years after Hall’s breakthrough in The Prestige, this is only her first lead role. Unsurprisingly, she’s every bit as bewitching front and centre as she has been on the sidelines: maybe it just took a debut filmmaker to realise that (this is director Nick Murphy’s first feature). While The Awakening is plotted more like a mystery than a horror film, it’s not short on shivery moments, which include a hackle-raising set piece involving a doll’s house and a coda much subtler than the simple twist ending it initially appears to be."