Awake starts off with a specious concession, that every year in the US, 700 people stay consciously aware of what’s going on around them while in surgery. That’s 1 in 30 patients that are being wheeled into operating theatres, basically being paralyzed, while feeling every cut and every stitch. There’s even a name for it: “Anaesthetic Awareness”. You’ve got to wonder about that though, 1 out of every 30 people that have surgery remember it in excruciatingly, painful detail. We have car parts recalled if there’s a 1 in 5,000 chance of it failing.



Such potentially loaded and ludicrous notions would really make me unable to enjoy this film if Awake itself weren’t so horribly ludicrous. Hayden Christenson is Clay Beresford, an investment wunderkind with a bad heart. He’s secretly engaged to Sam (Jessica Alba), the personal assistant of his mother (Lena Olin) who may not approve of the relationship. Clay gets the call, a heart is available for him and his friend Jack (Terrence Howard) is ready to perform the surgery. But the surgery doesn’t go smooth as no one is aware that patient is still technically awake, and the doctors are too busy planning his death to notice.



So from there, the whole thing devolves into a pretty pedestrian psychological thriller which is neither as smart as it thinks nor as thrilling. It’s like Hitchcock by way of the Teen Choice Awards and if that sounds ridiculous to you, it’s only because it really is utterly ridiculous. The proceedings are scripted and I don’t mean the usual way, I mean in the complete and utter transparency in where the story was going.



Granted, unoriginality isn’t a new conceit when it comes to Hollywood scripts but sometimes good actors can trump the written shortfall. Too bad we get Christenson and Alba, two utterly pretty people who seem to have to have little charisma, let alone with each other. I still fail to see what Christenson especially has in the way of talent; he suffers from limited emotional pallet, which translates into a one continuous huffy face. And I’m sorry, but Jessica Alba just didn’t have the range required for this part and because of it the “twist” just seems so forced.



To bottom line this, it’s pretty weak for new offerings at the cinema right now, so if you’ve already seen everything and are dying to kill some time in the comfort of the the theatre out of the cold then fine. Truth be told, the film’s not terrible, but it’s also unoriginal, uninspired and unrealistic. I wish I could say that I’ts hard to believe that this has been sitting on some studio’s shelf for two years, but I can’t. This movie is really that stale.