Wide Awake (2007/Genius DVD)
Picture:
C- Sound: C- Extras: D Feature: C
Wide Awake is a movie that is easy to walk
away from not knowing quite what to feel. It is put out as a horror film about a man who
as a child experienced open-heart surgery under inadequate anesthesia, and as a
result felt every scalpel slice but was unable to move or speak. The child grows up and begins reaping his
revenge on the children of the doctors who performed the surgery. But the movie is not really scary. Instead it's more disturbing. The underlying fear of the film is the
knowledge that every once in a while, this actually happens. And seizing upon that, the surgery scenes, in
particular the one that fuels the whole plot, are unrelenting. Being forced to watch surgery is bad enough,
but when you can hear the screams of a child as his chest cavity is being cut
open, you just want that scene to end, but instead it stretches on and on.
Despite
the one disturbing scene, though, the first half of the film is rather slow. The plot just takes its jolly old time setting
up the pieces that will only become important a half hour later. But once the plot does pick up, it begins to
take shape into a good old fashioned Korean revenge film in the spirit of
Oldboy, reviewed elsewhere on this site. It has a sweet double twist ending and
literally keeps you guessing until the last fifteen minutes of the film.
The
picture is in 1.78:1 widescreen and while it has good color, the picture is a
bit grainy. The sound is in Dolby
Digital 5.1 Surround with only Korean dialogue and optional English subtitles. The special features are numerous including a
making-of documentary that lasts about a half hour, deleted scenes, cast
interviews, and featurettes about the production design and the actual
phenomenon called anesthesia awareness. In
general these extras are long and not terribly interesting. All around, they just are not worth the time.
This film
is not for everyone. But there is
definitely an audience out there that will appreciate it. Be warned though, if you are a fan of horror,
that may not necessarily mean you will be a fan on Wide Awake.
- Matthew Carrick
