Dead Awake

Good performances, specially Nick Stahl. Good movie about acceptance and moving on.

Holy crap this was terrible. It was not a thriller. It was barely a romantic movie because there was no real romancing, they just skipped straight to being back together.

The music? OH GOD THE MUSIC WAS THE CHEESIEST THING SINCE KRAFT BLUE BOX.

Plot twist had less twists than SOMETHING WITH NO TWISTS IN IT. Apparently I need more words to describe how bad this movie was. Apparently I need more words to describe how bad this movie was. Apparently I need more words to describe how bad this movie was. Apparently I need more words to describe how bad this movie was.

"Dead Awake" is one of the strangest movies I have seen in quite some time. Obviously, it was inspired by "The Sixth Sense", though the mystery angle has been increased, as well as with its strangeness. It's directed in a really bizarre way, in an anonymous style (and with anonymous locations) that for the longest time made me think the movie was shot in a foreign country and the filmmakers were trying hard to disguise things. Stranger, however, is the screenplay. While the big questions the movie brings up are eventually answered, there are several minor questions that remained unanswered, like the mysterious policeman character at the beginning as well as the status of Nick Stahl's character at the end of the movie. While the movie is offbeat enough to make its ninety-two minutes never boring, in the end I feel most viewers will be unsatisfied because it doesn't quite give enough explanation.

This movie was really good and I'm not to sure why it got so many bad reviews. This movie made me think of "After.Life" but I am not sure why maybe because the eeriness that was in both of them? Just the feel of it I suppose. Anyways it is about a man who has gone through a tragedy and then somehow when he fakes his death the person who caused the tragedy somehow lives through it and gets to make amends. Doing so the whole movie leads you through twists and turns and leaves clues of the ending throughout, I knew what was going on. Boy gets girl the dead passes on after amends, kind of like the usual but written differently and uniquely. On a side note at times I felt it was awfully slow and could have been written better to pick up speed and get you into it more. I am no one to judge though. Overall the movie was really good predictable or not, worth a watch.

I did sort of enjoy this movie, but I'm not sure if some meaning was lost in the editing, or it was just not well written, or if I'm just a bit dense. The acting is fairly solid throughout, but there were so many loose ends you could make another 4 movies to tidy it all up. Some subplots just don't make sense. There are others that just seem to be forgotten, and left unfinished, or unexplained. Ideally it need another 30 minutes to wrap things up, but it was a strange movie. The cinematography had a real grainy quality, as if shot on super 8, and I'm not sure if this was intentional or due to budget restrictions. But surprisingly, it did fit the tone of the movie and didn't become annoying. I can understand the 6th sense references, but I also got a bit of a Jacob's Ladder vibe, mostly due to the, at times, jarringly disjointed narrative. Having said all that, it did keep me watching and curious.

Overall I gave it a six, as it kept me watching to the end and had some really good ideas, that unfortunately were not well executed at times, but there are so many bad movies out there with good scores on IMDB, and this is not one of them Ultimately a challenging watch, but has its has it has more than enough moments to carry it through.