Awoken co-writer/director Daniel J. Phillips had a choice. He could have made a movie about demonic possession, or a film about insomnia. Now, stories about people who are possessed by demons are about as dime a dozen as those about people who can’t sleep; the question is, how many films are there that deal with fatal familial insomnia (FFI)? Phillips chose poorly, to say the least.
FFI is very rare, but that’s no reason to treat it lightly (quite the opposite, I’d say). I’d never heard of it before; it took me watching Awoken to learn about it, which is good — on the other hand, I still had to do some research afterward, not to educate myself further on it, but to verify that it was indeed a real condition, unlike possession. So here’s another question: why put the two together?
In the movie, FFI is either caused by or a gateway for demonic possession. The demon du jour, by the way, is utterly underwhelming; it can only enter a person who has not slept for a long time — as opposed to, say, Fallen’s Azazel, who can possess humans just by touching them.
Additionally, Awoken’s demon has a sloppy habit of letting its hosts commit suicide just as it is about to be set free. Set free from what, I haven’t the foggiest. One would think that if a demon yearns for freedom, then it would be more interested in leaving bodies than entering them.
This could have been a much better movie if Phillips had removed all the supernatural elements. I’m reminded of My Sister’s Keeper, which revolved around the similarly obscure topic of donor children/savior siblings. That film isn’t perfect, but it is honest, and takes its subject matter with the seriousness it deserves. Meanwhile, Awoken addresses FFI with what is best described as a The Exorcist-meets-Bizarro Freddy Krueger approach.
