Awake: Critic Reviews

Awake is filled with risible medical behavior (the sterility of the operating room is repeatedly compromised) and a horizontal Mr. Christensen screaming variations on "Oh no, I can feel that!"

Awake is a pleasing if negligible diversion.

The movie tries going for a laugh or two. It even makes stabs at irony. But since none of the story is suspenseful, remotely believable, or, at the very least, cheaply entertaining, who cares?

Possibly the worst movie of 2007, and certainly the worst movie ever made featuring the spirits of dying people discussing their futures and sharing mortal flashbacks.

Accuracy is not the point. Suspense is. And from the moment Clay realizes he is not fully under anesthesia and can hear and feel everything that is happening, the movie had me.

Debuting writer-director Joby Harold's thriller does have an attention-getting plot hook, but piles on too many narrative gimmicks to maintain suspense or credibility.

[Joby] Harold's script has a surprise or three in it, a biggy near the end. But he's a director with no poker face. He tips his hand early and often.

The plot has more holes in it than a tea bag and the film should come with a warning label: don't go see with anyone with even a modicum of medical knowledge, because they'll surely spend the film huffing and rolling their eyes skyward.

With a couple of more drafts to mend the plot holes and restructure the middle act, Awake could have been saved.

The way characters interact with each other and the manner in which the master plan unfolds will stretch the credulity of even the most generous viewer.

Sometimes in their urgency to prevent critics from seeing their dreck, film companies throw out the baby with the bathwater. Such is the case with this nifty little thriller.

Writer-director Joby Harold's debut is stylishly self-assured and suspenseful enough to quicken the pulse.

Outlandish, preposterous, contrived,and implausible thriller which happens to be fun if you ignore the fact that it's outlandish,preposterous,contrived and implausible.

Imagine it's a comedy and pray for the end.

Less painful than having your chest cut open, but a disagreeable experience just the same.

Se um ator admiravel como Terrence Howard surge tao constrangedor neste longa, que chances teriam pobres aspirantes a interpretes como Hayden Christensen e Jessica Alba?

Sex, Lies and Surgical Tape meets I Saw Mommy Killing Santa Claus!

much better than i expected

It becomes more and more fun as the twists pile up -- not entirely convincing, but diverting, like something concocted by a bright eighth-grader.

Harold sustains an unsettling tone and the graphic depiction of what goes on under the knife is, well, a surgery-phobic patient's worst nightmare

The twist-happy screenplay holds together, and the actors around Christensen are better than they have to be: not only reliable hands like Lena Olin and Arliss Howard, but also a perfectly cast Jessica Alba, smartly playing with and against her looks.

Makes one want to assume a state of mind opposite to the film's title.

Unloads a volley of plot twists that'll have you slapping your head in disbelief, provided you haven't figured them out by the end of Act I.