Written by Stephen Volk and Nick Murphy
*British Independent Film Awards nomination - Rebecca Hall
England, 1921: a nation beset by the grief following World War I. A skeptical woman scientist, Florence Cathcart, is adamant in her conviction that all ghosts and spiritual manifestations can be explained away as either callous fraud or the products of fevered imaginations. But when she is called to a countryside boarding school for boys to investigate rumours of an apparent haunting, she finds her beliefs -- all her beliefs -- shaken to the core. Facing something genuinely awakened from the past, she realizes her rationality finally gives her no place to hide.
Watch the trailer for The Awakening on YouTube
Watch this exclusive first CLIP on www.empire.com
Watch BBC's "Film 2011: Behind The Scenes of The Awakening with Rebecca Hall and Dominic West"
Cast:
Florence Cathcart..........Rebecca Hall
Mallory...........................Dominic West
Maud..............................Imelda Staunton
Judd...............................Joseph Mawle
Tom................................Isaac Hempstead-Wright
McNair............................Shaun Dooley
Rev Hugh Purslow..........John Shrapnel
Harriet Cathcart.............Diana Kent
Vera Flood......................Tilly Vosburgh
Katherine Vandermeer...Anastasia Hille
Freddie Strickland..........Cal Macininch
Constance Strickland.....Lucy Cohu
"Twisty and atmospheric..." "With beautiful cinematography, restained use of effects, and acting much better than it had to be,The Awakening gives thriller fans more than they're trained to expect." The Hollywood Reporter
"An instant British horror classic" Glamour
"A creepy and compelling ghost story" GQ
"If The Awakening had simply painted a rapturous, thrilling ghost story, it would have been fine... but Murphy and co-writer Stephen Volk bring the sadness of loss into the proceedings." "The Awakening is for those who loved The Devil's Backbone and The Others. It's for those who want to be transported into a sumptuous and haunting place on the hazy line between life and death." Collider.com
"Referencing classics of the genre from The Innocents to The Others, Nick Murphy's debut feature is a chilling haunted-house yarn that boasts a great cast, plenty of surprises, and is as deceptively moving as it is chilling" Michael Heyden, London Film Festival
"Ripping story... weird and scary in all the right places" Toronto Sun
"A superior haunted house tale with a captivating performance by Rebecca Hall" Daily Telegraph
"Director Nick Murphy and his co-writer Stephen Volk have crafted something special, a ghost story to get the blood pumping with a chill that lingers betond the roll of the credits... Defiant in the face of the decaying post-modern scary movie, The Awakening evokes the spirit of the classic ghost story, with a genuine understanding of the creation and application of fear which needs no gore-strewn slaughterhouses or operatic disembowelment; this is a welcome return to the grip of death and its effects." "Like Volk's Ghostwatch, the path we are led down ends up somewhere very different to a place we might expect." "It understands what scares us and suffuses the air with a sense of dread and unease" HeyUGuys
"Spooky, involving and occasionally resonant... providing a terrific lead part for one of the most promising actresses of her generation." "It's got the same kind of feeling as a really well-done fairground ghost train, which we can't help but feel is the effect that a film like this should have, really." "A gift of a character..." "We're not ones to encourage the franchising of films, necessarily, but we wouldn't be particularly distressed to hear of future Florence Cathcart adventures down the line... Disarmingly moving" IndieWIRE
"The film features a script by Stephen Volk, a man who knows a thing or two about scary stuff, having created the TV drama Afterlife and being behind one of Empire's favourite spooky fake-outs, 1992's Ghostwatch" Empire
"A grown-up script allied with Nick Murphy's unshouty direction makes for an assured, imaginative film, that plays as a very British kind of ghost story" Steve O'Brien, The Fan Can
"The Best Ghost Story Since The Others... Consistently chilling horror, which manages to be scary, erotic, intellectually and emotionally engaging" Whatculture.com
"Volk's writing still shines through here. The Awakening is absolutely a continuation of his previous work (Gothic, Ghostwatch, Afterlife) -- obsessive examinations of why we need our ghosts... A finely written, finely acted, finely crafted ghost story, and quite possibly one of the finest British films of recent years--but most assuredly one of the best ghost stories of the decade" Fangoria
"Everything about this classic ghost story is assured -- all held together by an exquisitely crafted screenplay" Anton Bitel, Little White Lies
Join The Awakening FaceBook page
Read the Den of Geek interview with director Nick Murphy
Read the interview with co-writer Stephen Volk on The Fan Can (Steve O'Brien)
Watch the Rebecca Hall interview in The Culture Show (BBC2)
Read the GQ interview with Dominic West
Dominic West in The Independent
Read the review on Whatculture!
Listen to Mark Kermode's radio review of The Awakening
Read the production announcement on Screen Daily and Empire Online.
Read horror writer and film critic Anne Billson in The Guardian on "why ghost stories like The Awakening are always best when they give up the ghost". (Nov 11, 2011)
Read The Awakening's composer Daniel Pemberton on "why the very best soundtracks are the simplest". (Nov 15, 2011)
Director: Nick Murphy
Director of Photography: Eduard Grau
Producer: David M. Thompson, Sarah Curtis, Julia Stannard
Executive Producers: Joe Oppenheimer, Will Clarke, Jenny Borgars, Olivier Courson, Norman Merry, Carole Sheridan
Production Companies: Origin Pictures, BBC Films, StudioCanal Features, Creative Scotland, Lip Sync Productions, Eagle Pictures
For full cast and credits, go to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).
More information about Origin Pictures
