Before I Wake

This British thriller benefits from a solid she versus she conflict between wonderfully evil Jean Kent and empathy-inducing threatened damsel Mona Freeman, but the screenplay piles on way too obvious details, events and behavior under the guise of "suspense". Other than one quality red herring (the ambiguous hero playing Mona's doctor/boyfriend), the movie plays on a single note: the heroine's growing paranoia is anything but that -she's being constantly set up to be Jean's next victim.

Kent's acting is only matched on film by such greats as Dame Judith Anderson, who had the same uncanny ability to appear placid and even perfectly reasonable on the surface, while hiding malevolence under the surface. The movie would have been far more successful had there been some possiblity that Mona's character was imagining things, rather than spoon feeding the viewer a constant stream of evidence that her suppositions are all true. The story's final twist and instant happy ending don't ring true at all.

Though it's all entirely predicable, this, I still quite enjoyed it. "April" (Mona Freeman) returns home for the funeral of her father who was tragically killed in a boating accident. Her stepmother "Florence" (Jean Kent) shows all the outward signs of sympathy, but as the details of her father's death emerge, "April" beings to smell a rat. Things are only compounded when the reading of her father's will doesn't quite deliver what was expected! Is "Mona" just an hopeless paranoiac or might there really be danger? It's all just a little to rushed and convenient at the end, but the story is quite menacingly delivered by a jobbing cast rattling through a simple story of greed. Maxwell Reed features sparingly but adds very little to what is really a film about two strong women, some cigarettes and a few bottles of VSOP.

For a British film noir with a far from famous cast, I have to say that the quality of BEFORE I WAKE (SHADOW OF FEAR in the UK) really amazes me, beginning with impeccable direction by Albert Rogell, who manages to keep the spectator on edge with Mona Freeman and Jean Kent appearing on the screen almost nonstop, engaging in razor-sharp dialogue. I liked the fact that Freeman never hid her suspicions about the former nurse now running the house that used to be hers, where everything has been changed, and former personnel dispatched since Freeman's departure to California.

Rogell extracts superb performances from the female leads (Jean Kent is truly memorable in her subtle evil; Maxwell Reed's name comes in second in the credits, but he has a far shorter and less significant part than the two women).

The action is so riveting that I was desperate to see what would happen in the end, as fate seems to stack things up against Freeman, who has already lost her parents very likely under Kent's murderous hand.

Reminiscent of REBECCA, with a house and inheritance at the heart, and exchanges reminiscent of the Joan Fontaine-Judith Anderson duel in the Hitchcock film. Naturally, Reed is no Olivier and Freeman no Fontaine (she is also clearly older than 20), but Kent is not the inferior of Anderson in this part.

Fit depiction of how small town gossip can turn locals against one, and tar one's good name, even one's mental condition.

Wonderful cinematography. Strongly recommended to anyone interested in film noir.

The problem with this film is that Mona Freeman overdoes it from beginning to end, while Jean Kent stays calm and cool long enough to be more or less absolutely convincing. You tend to react against Mona's overreactions from the beginning, and it is unavoidable to come to think that she plays her cards as bad as possible, while in such a situation prudence would have been vital, especially since she has no proof at all, and the only proof that is ever produced appears after her supposed death. She is just a young immature girl who hasn't even come of age, while Jean Kent is a qualified nurse with a lifetime of experience. When all the cards at last are being shown in the end, you also have to wonder why no one in the entire village, including two qualified doctors, never even suspected the truth or could consider anything else than the palpable outward appearances. The script could have been made more subtle, and then the thriller could really have been something for Hitchcock, but as it is, Mona Feeman hopelessly falls in the category of amateurs, while Jean Kent remains unassailable as a very professional expert on intrigue. She was always good at ambiguous roles of clandestine deceit, and here she is also the expert at such role-play, while poor Mona Freeman definitely needs to grow up.

How did a class act like Mona Freeman allow herself to be drawn into a project as mediocre and one dimensional as 'Shadow of Fear'? The sight of the credits rolling against a backdrop of a gigantic Shreddy does not augur well.

Freeman, just shy of her twenty first birthday returns from the United States, replete with distinct American brogue, to the village where she was raised, for her father's funeral. In the final months of his life, he remarried. Now widowed, Jean Kent is revered, respected - all but canonized -by the locals for her kind nature and generous acts of benevolence. Freeman alone identifies her hypocrisy, the evil behind the eyes and the ulterior motives behind her actions. Though deeply suspicious and fearful of her behavior, convincing others, who see her as running a close second to Mother Teresa, proves to be more difficult than flushing a mattress down a lavatory.

Even amiable, avuncular, rotund police sergeant, Alexander Gauge, best known as Friar Tuck in T.V.'s Robin Hood (updated and rebranded as Air Fryer Tuck for the 2021 remake) becomes indignant and aggressive at Freeman's insinuations.

Cut price and low budget throughout. The car, in which Kent and Freeman almost crash would fit snugly into Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's hilarious Superthunderstingcar parody of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Supermarionation children's shows from the 60's.

With little to offer in the way of subplots and surprises, Shadow of Fear drifts steadily towards its conclusion. The inconsistencies of the script, the predictable nature of the story line and a raft of mannered, 'pays the rent' acting results in a movie with less gumption than Lord Sumption.