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Movies & TV Movies & TV Reviews

The Awakening

THE AWAKENING (Nick Murphy). 107 minutes. Opens Friday (August 17). For venues and times, see Movies. Rating: NNN


The success of Paranormal Activity in North America has revitalized the classical ghost story.

And for British filmmakers, that means a return to the good old-fashioned Old Dark House picture.

The Awakening, like the recent Daniel Radcliffe vehicle The Woman In Black, is a fine example, placing a driven protagonist in an isolated location famous for its supernatural creepitude.

It’s 1920, and paranormal debunker Florence Cathcart (Rebecca Hall, of The Town and Please Give) is summoned to a remote Cumbrian boarding school where a student has apparently been frightened to death by a ghost. And, of course, the truth turns out to be far more complicated.

As the Old Dark House template demands, much of The Awakening requires Florence to creep through the halls of a forbidding old manse, setting up little traps involving bells and powder and such. And because this is the 21st century, those old-school pleasures are enhanced with CG scares and musical stings so the contemporary audience doesn’t fall asleep or start texting friends.

Things get dodgy in the last reel, when director Nick Murphy and co-writer Stephen Volk deploy a double-twist ending so convoluted it has to be explained twice. Hall very nearly sells it anyway – she’s just that good – but it’s a bum note in an otherwise entertaining exercise.

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