The directorial début of Nick Murphy opens with a quote from Florence Cathcart’s book – seeing through ghosts, which states that in this age where endless lives have been claimed by the war and influenza that ‘this is a time for ghosts’. Set in 1921, supernatural investigator Florence Cathcart believes there is no such thing as ghosts, only people pretending to be ghosts. On any case she takes up she brings equipment and traps to earn the job title of Ghostbuster, all to reveal the hoax, the reality of the ghost. She is the archetypal cynic and with good reason too as illustrated in the opening scene.
An emotional Florence (Rebecca Hall) returns home to be met by history teacher, Robert Mallorey (Dominic West), who believes that his school has a real ghost and not a child pretending and after providing compelling evidence in the shape of photographs as well as quoting her statement on fear from her book, despite his tactics Florence joins Robert to his school.
This is all thanks to the school Maid, Maud (Imelda Staunton) who petitions the school head to approach Florence. Arriving at the school, the would be Ghostbuster is brought up to speed with developments, where a student recently died from an asthma attack brought about by the fear of seeing the ghost. The Awakening sees Florence try to resolve the haunting as well as dealing with her own emotional history.
As well as haunted house sub-genre piece, there are many other things happening in through the secondary characters in the shape of first world war guilt or the period detail. The detail that needs to be celebrated in the capturing of this duality of this haunted house period piece is the location. Manderston House in the Scottish Borders captures all the tones for both a period drama and a haunted house. The drained colour palette and the vast expanse of the house captures the hard nose of the pre-21st century education system and the isolated, sparse school halls providing perfect haunting grounds.
The one over-arching quality needed for a period drama to ring true is class and with a cast made up of Rebecca Hall, Dominic West and Imelda Staunton, this is a film of impeccable breeding. Not only do such well-regarded actors add weight, they also supplements its status as a genre piece. Such a star-studded cast is a rarely afforded commodity in the genre and the script makes full use of this. Hall is magnificent as Cathcart, a character who has been broken by her past and embodies her constant internal struggle as well as the more external way she struggles to cope with the ghost. It’s almost redundant to comment on the other major players of which Staunton is as consistently excellent as ever, the same is true of West as the unpredictable history master.
Best of all, above the location and the cast, is the atmosphere. The desolate environment is complemented by a lack of soundtrack which is a welcome addition. There are too many horror films that tell you what to feel and when through the beats of the soundtrack. Conversely, the lack of sound brings the malevolence of the house to the foreground. The more traditional jump scares are never anything less than predictable, one of the more obvious becomes much more than a simple jump thanks to merely staring into the contorted and twisted face of the ghost.
The awakening is at its best when all is quiet and still, before the ghost sparks to life. Not knowing what is going to happen and when, makes the genre what it is. Nonetheless, the one thing that uniformly ruins the genre is the inevitable revelation on the reality of the ghost. Where other films have their teeth removed via such exposition, the awakening might not escape this fate but instead becomes something completely different. Thanks to the development of Florence and the brilliant turn from Rebecca Hall it ends with an emotional personal truth rather than being diluted. The development is still somewhat questionable, thankfully the drama and emotion over-ride this.
While far from flawless, thanks to some plot strands that go nowhere and the limitations ingrained into the genre. Murphy and (Steven) Volk’s script may not overcome the limitations of the sub-genre, instead the awakening becomes a horror film with all the thrills and chills and an emotional ending that never abandons the ambiguity necessary to make such a film work.
Filed under: World & Indie
