Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Halloween Horror Challenge Oct 10: The Akwekning (2010)


THE AWAKENING (2010)
D. Vince Totenda
Blind Eye Films
DV


Boy if there ever was a bait and switch this is it. Just check the reviews on IMDB and they tell the story. We got suckered too. On Netflix streaming this has FOUR AND A HALF listed and the write up sounds like it COULD potentially be alright. So we added to the cue and watched what turned out to be the biggest piece of shit we have watched so far in the October Halloween Horror challenge this year. The four and a half star rating is clearly bogus, friends of the filmmakers jamming the star rating on Netflix (the film is also on Play Station and other streaming services so watch out for such jamming on those services too). Hey I don't blame them, I have myself have done it with movies I have out there on various places and every indie filmmaker has doesn't the same. Though I doubt any of us have gone to quite that extreme. But it doesn't change the fact that THE AWAKENING is a turkey of epic proportions.

It isn't that the story is super horrible, well it isn't good, but it isn't the worst. A group of annoying hipsters get an invite to a rave out in the middle of nowhere from some bimbo they meet in a bar. They set out to go to this expecting to find the greatest weekend long rave in history but find that a Mexican demon has possessed people and killed off everyone there, and in turn started killing off their annoying shit group of friends. Along the way they pick up an extremely cute archeology student who is studying the legends of the area so we can some insight on what is going on.

What we end up with is an endless confused mess of a movie that can't figure out if it wants to be a slapstick comedy for the first half, a ridiculous idie rock rave movie, or a road horror film. What it ends up being is a mess where nothing meshes, and most of it just comes off as laughable at best. This is the kind of movie where you sit watching it wondering if the people involved have actually seen other horror films or if this is just some sort of weird vanity project. There is a few almost workable moments in the final reel, but everything is completely telegraphed. I will say the movie is rather well edited, it does have that going for it.

Review © Andrew Copp

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