FFI or Fatal Familia Insomnia (by definition on the Medical News Today website) is “a rare genetic disorder. It causes sleep problems and brain damage that eventually lead to death” FFI “stems from a genetic abnormality that leads to the death of neurons in the brain. The issue will worsen over time”.
Awoken dabbles in this rare disorder and it intrigued me because I had done a little bit of research in my younger years about REM sleep, dreams and dreamlessness because I rarely remember any of my dreams and sadly when I do, they’re usually very stressful dreams.
The premise is pretty straight and simple. Sleep deprivation is the basis of the storyline, and within that, a person suffering from extreme sleep disorders, such as FFI, becomes susceptible to other ‘things’.
A med student, Karla (Sara West), has a brother Blake (Benson Jack Anthony) suffering from a terminal sleep illness and is on the brink of falling into a coma and dying due to the disorder. The hospital (at which she is a resident in training) can no longer treat him for his disorder and tells Karla that he’d be better off at home for the duration of his illness. (seems a little far-fetched, but I’m not a doctor, and don’t know how the hospitals would actually deal with this circumstance).
Desperate to help her brother (her only family as her father and mother had passed away) she puts her trust in an instructor / doctor, Robert (Erik Thomson) who was close with Karla’s parents and reveals to her that he is doing experimental treatments to help a handful of people suffering from different extreme sleep disorders. He convinces her, and two of her medical student friends, Alice (Amelia Douglass) and Patrick (Matt Crook), to transfer her brother to this location so that they can all continue to treat him.
(Red Flag #1 – the tests are being conducted in what looks like an abandoned building and should be condemned. Red Flag #2 – seems odd that this instructor would not have at least one other actual Doctor that is qualified helping him, but he recruits 3 med students to help him with these patients that are in a dire condition. I guess if characters in horror movies always saw the red flags, we would have no horror movies, right?!)
Almost immediately, you are introduced to the idea that there is more than just sleep disorders plaguing the patients in this sub-basement makeshift hospital space. While doing some research, Karla and her friend happen upon a box of VHS videos (you know, those things we used to stick in a video tape player, they were rectangular in shape and had to be physically rewound if you wanted to watch the movie again?). Karla and Alice start watching the tapes and find that they’re recordings of her father and Robert treating similar patients. One of those patients happens to be Karla’s mother.
They are watching these tapes, sort of in secret and in-between treating the patients. While strange things start occurring with their patients, the VHS recordings are also revealing that something is askew. As the viewer, you are getting two stories simultaneously, and also getting some backstory to how this hush-hush make-shift hospital came to be.
The one thing I would say is that it was a movie that could have used a little more substance, depth? It just felt a little like, here we go, zoom zoom, here is the plot, zoom zoom, here is the climax with way too much monologuing (the protagonists character towards the end tells the ‘backstory’ of his situation therefore letting the viewer understand the ‘why’ but we all know that too much monologuing can be a story / movie killer) by the protagonist and then before you know it, BOOM it’s all over.
I found this movie to be entertaining to watch, it had some good scares and spooks, but not necessarily Haunting on Hill House scares. The acting wasn’t Oscar level, but it wasn’t horrible, the story line wasn’t mind-blowing, but it wasn’t super terrible.
I will say that the brother, Blake (Benson Jack Anthony) was great casting in the sense that his role was the foundation of the horror of this movie. Talk about a creep-tastic acting job!
All in all, I’d say it’s a ‘ho-hum’ horror flick, I think that you could be safe to watch this and be entertained, but you won’t be like OMG OMG that was AMAZING (insert jazz hands here)!!! I feel like the movie was made to walk the safe side for a horror movie and, if it had been pushed just a little more over that edge, could have been a better flick.
Awoken
Released: 2020
Rating: NR
IMDB Rating: 5.9 out of 10
Streaming on Hulu and Hoopla
Rentable on other streaming devices, YouTube, Amazon and Google Play for only $2.99
Reeses REEL Rating
2.5 out of 5
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