User Reviews

AHA SLEEP... we meet again. You can't stop me from studying and watching this time.

A new movie dropped on Netflix. A random event happened, and for no reason no one can sleep, except a young kid. Now her mother had to choose to save her or sacrifice her for research.

Let me get the good out of the way. Gina Rodriguez was good in this movie as she played the mother who tried to protect her kid while slowly losing her mind.

It's funny how ironic this movie was: the characters cannot sleep, but the movie itself was putting me to sleep! The beginning when the event started was not bad. However, as the movie went on, it became so slow and boring. It felt like nothing happened in this movie. The director tried for some cool angles and effects, but those didn't help making the story any better.

The premise was actually interesting and unique, but the script went for a generic thriller with nothing special to offer. However, the movie was unintentionally hilarious at a point. One character saw a dropped pine cone and thought it was a grenade.

The last act was a bit chaotic with some violence because people started to lose their marbles. Even though it was slightly entertaining, it could not save this movie.

Overall, an ironically boring and sleep-inducing movie that I will forget. 4/10

Oh wait what did I just watch? Ah, gotta catch some sleep.

The premise sounded very good, I had high hopes going in, but the plot becomes really silly, really quickly, with time never really being shown in any kind of consistent manner. Somehow this film manages to be stupidly fast paced and ridiculously slow at the same time, a feat I've never seen in a film before. It could have been explained so simply with a small subtitle day 1, day 2 etc and it would have made more sense.

People became bloodthirsty within hours, which made no sense at all. There are a lot of questions which are never answered: The scene with the prisoners, explained as "the guards came back and opened the doors" why? It agains makes no sense, a simply and more plausible answer would have been "the doors were electronically opened when the event happened. Done.

Why did the one prisoner save them? Never explained. How did he suddenly reappear at the hub with the family having no idea where the family were? Never explained.

Why was dodge seemingly able to function better than most? How did he die? Never answered.

Now onto the massive plot hole... I figured out the reason pretty much straight away, it was so obvious and yet no one in the film asked the basic question, what happened to the girl that hadn't happened to the others? A team of scientists never even asked. She died and was revived, simple.

When the girl finally figures it out, why did they take the mom to the lake to drown her? Why not just put a pillow over her head right there and use the defibrillator? I'm guessing the director wanted to use water as a kind of "baptism" but why go down a religious route at the end after showing the religious people in the film to be nutters?

Poorly written, poorly edited and poorly directed which is a real shame as the acting itself wasn't too bad.

Dull, dull, dull.

A great premise ruined by a very pedestrian script, poor acting and a non-conclusion. This film tries to be clever and fails. For such a short movie it dragged and I really wanted to like it more, but couldn't engage with the characters or the perceived peril they were in.

Avoid.

I think it's only about 25 minutes in, they are in a church, they just found out the daughter can still sleep. Someone actually stands up and says "we have to sacrifice her". I think at this point they haven't slept for...a day? Utter nonsense and terrible writing. I turned it off and went to the trusty internet to read reviews. Seems like a made a good decision. Some great actors in this movie, can we get decent writers and a good director? Barry Pepper was in Saving Private Ryan for F's sake. Netflix is definitely going to for quantity over quality model and it's getting old.

This is a standard Netflix apocalyptic production . No one can sleep and slowly people start to lose their mind . A mother and her 2 children are travelling to a military run "hub" that claims to be working towards a "cure" and they think they can help them since the little girl can sleep. The ending is a little predictable to anyone who's been paying attention, but I thought it was enjoyable to watch. Stop expecting an intricately woven intelligent thriller everytime and just watch the movie for fun.

Always it seems in these types of films, there's the irritating angsty teenager, the smart little kid who holds the secret and the incredibly annoying Mom who acts as though she's going to save the world single handed.

And of course it's American and therefore they just start shooting each other for no reason whatsoever right from the get go.

I love this genre but when will we ever get decent writers and actors again?

Jill (Gina Rodriguez) steals expired drugs from work. She's on probation for drugs and was forced to surrender custody of her two children to her mother. It's a struggle to stay on the straight and narrow. Something happens and all the electronics in the world are rendered inoperative. Then something worst happens. Nobody can sleep. Dr. Murphy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) leads a military operation to find a cure.

Anybody remember The Quiet Earth (1985). The two premises have a lot of similarities. The problem with this movie is that the solution is obvious right from the start. The story needs to hide that. It can't show its hand. It makes Jill look stupid to not realize something so obvious. The other problem is having annoying stupid kids. It's a minor problem which exists a lot of times and I'm willing to overlook it. I can't overlook the fact that nobody would be stupid enough to not see what makes Matilda different. In the end, I'm a sucker for this type of high concept sci-fi. It could done better. I wish the kids are less annoying especially the boy. I do like Jill trying to teach Matilda how to survive. It's a good sci-fi writing exercise but it does need some minor tweaks.

I'm normally quite a fan of Netflix films but this is one of the worst ones I've seen and I've watched open house. Whoever was in charge of doing the trailer did a really good job because they made the film look really good, I feel snaked. There was literally no explanation given to why everything was happening. You can just have something like that happen and give no reason for why it was happening. What the hell was the ending? I'm assuming by the noise at the end she woke up, so what next? You can't just end the film there, what did they do from that point on? That was a cop out ending. I genuinely wouldn't waste my time with this.

A great concept wasted. The premise is simple, some cosmic event happens, and no one can sleep anymore. Well almost no one. Along with the unraveling of humanity we have the story of an estranged mother trying to save her children, one of whom is able to sleep. The film is competently shot and I found most of the performances adequate. Gina Rodriquez is solid enough, and I was happy to see Jennifer Jason Leigh, who unfortunately only has a minor role.

The film really falls apart on the screenplay level. Mainly because there is almost no consistency in the scenario. Our main character already started 12-24 hours less sleep than most people, and she frankly never really seems to that much acuity. I mention this because there is almost no consistency with how people fall apart. One day without sleep and a law enforcement officer is willing to execute someone, and people are considering sacrificing a child. It just does not parse.

While some reviewers found the film boring, I did not. I thought the scenario was interesting enough to see it through. When we are talking about consistency this really comes to a head at the end. We spend all of this time watching society and people unravel, it is all fairly dark. Have no worries though, NONE of our protagonists die, but even better they basically fall upon a solution that should have been discovered when the first person somewhere was revived.

A missed opportunity sadly. If the idea of a world where no can sleep intrigues you, but you want a scifi/horror film with a happy ending, well this is the film for you.

It was nice to see Gina Rodriguez and Jennifer Jason Leigh together again after one of my favorite films, Annihilation, but this film is awful. I get that the production values are low, that there's a limited budget, that Christopher Nolan's name doesn't come anywhere near this film, but at the very least Netflix you can hire good writers. Skillful writing is the cornerstone of all good entertainment, and can easily mitigate a lot of problems associated with a low budget or bad special effects...you can still enjoy the story if it's written well. This film doesn't even have that. Instead of naturally evolving as part of the dynamics among the characters, the central concept of the story is introduced about ten minutes in, bluntly introduced as an idea that the characters and the viewers are suddenly supposed to accept. High concept films aren't supposed to work this way. Children of Men begins in media res. 2012 takes high-concept from the very beginning and rolls it out so you can see the full effect of the concept. Awake doesn't do either of these things, it occupies an uncomfortable middle ground that quickly turns the film into a B movie.

I had to stop watching when the creepy pastor leaves the main room of the church and goes into another room where Gina's daughter is sitting, and begins talking to her as though she's an adult and can understand everything he's babbling about, all without her grandmother present. Suddenly the girl wonders aloud if she has to die because she knows how to sleep. What? How? Who? When? Confuse me?

There's a lot of programming on Netflix that you can only watch fifteen minutes of before moving on to something else. They can save a lot of money if they only make the first fifteen minutes of every movie.

As a person who has been suffering sleep deprivation since childhood I can asssure you, it doesn't happen like that. You don't shoot people or try to sacrifice kids out of a sudden. There are so many questions to ask.

1) How can that white grandma be a mother of that latina? And what happened to her?

2) What was the point of the weirdo priest?

3) What happened to Dodger?

4) What is the reason behind all that? We just heard a theory from the crazy doctor, that's it.

5) Do you need to die and come back to life in order to get back the ability of sleep?

There are more I'm really sleepy right now so I'll keep it short.