Posted in: Movies | Tagged: awakening, bbc, dominic west, film, interview, nick murphy, rebecca hall, Review, video

VIDEO: The Awakening Goes Under The Microscope With Director Nick Murphy

The Awakening is a haunted manor house story from the horror subgenre that brought you classics like The Others, The Haunting, The Innocents and The Woman In Black, and while not perhaps as striking and memorable as those films, it works well as a post-WWI drama about loss and trauma, and also managed some decent scares.

It's essentially a BBC period drama with a J-Horror style Wide Mouthed Ghost, with Rebecca Hall, Dominic West and Imelda Staunton as three people trying to solve a possible murder by haunting in a posh private school.

I went to see The Awakening shortly after going to see Paranormal Activity 3, a film so desperate for scares that at one point a character inexplicably jumps out of a cupboard wearing a scary Halloween witch mask and screaming "BOOGA-BOOGA-BOOGA!" Needless to say, it was a relief to watch a film where every jump scare is actually ghost-related and not just Mr Jenkins the Butler dropping a cup on the other side of the room and causing a sudden dramatic orchestral sting.

It probably helped that I've got a bit of a girl crush on Rebecca Hall, but I enjoyed watching it, was creeped out in the appropriate places and found the characters and story compelling enough to keep me interested.

Mini-review over, now here's an interview I did with director, where I even got him to tell us a bit of a ghost story about something spooky that happened on set.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/32367263[/vimeo]

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