Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on basement television.
There’s a trend in movies, horror movies especially, of American remakes of successful foreign films. Sometimes, you get lucky and get a remake that gets in the neighborhood of the original, as with The Ring. Sometimes you get something at least watchable, like The Grudge. Most of the time you get crap like the remake of Pulse or Oldboy. And then you get films like The Awakening, that clearly have specific source material but do their best to hide it.
In the case of The Awakening, there are equal parts The Others and The Orphanage and a soupçon of The Sixth Sense. The overall vibe is one of the first movie. There is a definite attempt here to be upsetting and disturbing, to touch something deep in the human psyche. This is less about shocking the audience and more about crawling under its skin. Almost in spite of itself, it manages to do so at times. The connection to The Orphanage is the setting—a boarding school where most of the young boys are orphans. It’s a big, rambling house, and much of the story takes place during a break, so there are only a few people rattling around inside.
