Hayden Christensen And Jessica Alba's Forgotten Medical Thriller Has A Truly Terrifying Concept
Some movies make it their mission to make viewers (including Stephen King) physically uncomfortable. By nature, these are usually wide-knuckle, extremely graphic horrors — like "Martyrs," "A Serbian Film," or "Inside," just to mention a few — but there are exceptions. Think of Pedro Almodóvar's 2011 revenge-thriller "The Skin I Live In" or Gaspar Noé's 2002 classic "Irreversible." And somewhere between those two is Joby Harold's "Awake," a 2007 psychological thriller mostly remembered for star Jessica Alba getting nominated for a Razzie Award for Worst Actress in 2008. But the truth is, if you've seen this as a teenager back in the aughts as I have, its horrific medical scenario must have stayed with you even if your brain managed to bury it somewhere deep in your subconscious.
"Awake" follows Clay (Hayden Christensen), the son of a billionaire with a failing heart requiring a transplant as soon as possible. Luckily, he knows just the right surgeon, Dr. Jack Harper (Terrence Howard), a friend of his who's more than happy to operate. But just before lying on that operating table, Clay quickly marries Sam (Alba), his mother's personal assistant, whom he's been secretly seeing for about a year. As the surgery begins, Clay realizes that something went awry with the anesthesia since he's still conscious and awake yet completely paralyzed at the same time. While his eyes are taped down and he's breathing through a tube, he can not only feel every physical incision made on his body but also hear what his supposed friend and the medical team talk about. And as it turns out, they're discussing how they're going to kill him on that table and make it look like a medical complication.
Awake was both wild and preposterous, but it did manage to capture moviegoers' attention and turn a profit
There's no denying that Harold's only feature as writer-director was riddled with inconsistencies, medical implausibilities, dumb decisions, and some poor acting. But his anxiety-inducing direction served as a sort of "you-can't-look-away" spectacle, so intense at times it made your palms sweat. Sure, these days we probably see more nauseating moments in more realistic medical dramas like HBO Max's terrific "The Pitt," but back in the aughts, "Awake" had potent shock value that held viewers' attention. If you could get over the often melodramatic acting and over-the-top twists and turns, applying a big dose of suspension of disbelief, you could actually relate to what Christensen's Clay was put through in less than 90 minutes.
Naturally, most critics lambasted the film for its cheesy, soapy theatrics, but general audiences weren't that harsh. Despite the terrible reviews, Harold's movie became a mild box-office success, making over $32 million worldwide against its pretty low $8.6 million budget. Of course, it helped a lot that both Christensen and Alba were hot properties in 2007, the former riding high on his "Star Wars" fame and the latter dominating rom-coms while also delivering an unexpectedly impressive turn in Robert Rodriguez's mesmerizing masterpiece, "Sin City."
The truth is, "Awake" got a bad rep early on and was buried relatively quickly, but it isn't nearly as awful as it looks. In fact, if you're on the lookout for viscerally off-putting medical thrillers, this one might surprise you — or make you physically uncomfortable, at the very least.