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The Awakening | 2012 | R | - 6.7.2

After the end of WWI, a woman (Rebecca Hall) is motivated by grief to try and debunk sightings of a child ghost at a boarding school. But her life starts unraveling when an apparition becomes evident. Also with Dominic West, Imelda Staunton and Cal Macaninch. Directed by Nick Murphy. [1:47]

SEX/NUDITY 6 - A man and a woman kiss passionately and they lie back on a bed as they continue to kiss; moments later we hear sexual moaning and see the man above the woman as they continue to kiss passionately and they appear to be having sex (they are both fully clothed).
 We see a woman in a bathtub (it is implied that she is fully nude and we see her shoulders) and it is implied that she is sexually stimulating herself under the water (we do not see her hands); the woman stands up and we see her bare breasts and a portion of her bare back as she walks to a peep-hole in the wall (it is implied that the woman believes a man is watching her) and she screams when she sees a ghostly face. As a woman watches through a hole in wall, we see a man climb out of a tub and his bare buttocks and chest are visible. We see nude photographs of women on a man's desk and a woman's bare breasts are visible in one photograph.
 A woman kisses a man briefly.
 A woman tells a man that another man had attempted to "be with" (meaning rape) her until she fought back. A man tells a woman that he had seen her "with" another man, implying that he had seen them having sex.

VIOLENCE/GORE 7 - A woman experiences a flashback of herself as a child, watching her parents fight, and she witnesses her father shoot her mother. A woman experiences a flashback of a her father shooting himself in the head as she (as a young girl) watches, and the force of the bullet entering under his chin knocks him off his feet. A woman experiences herself as a girl, standing in front of her father's gun, held to her chest (we see this in multiple rooms as she opens the doors); the man then shoots the girl's mother and the girl runs for safety. A man holding a rifle walks around a house and shoots into hallways; we see a boy's body collapse and a pool of blood by the wound. A woman holds her shoulder and it is covered in blood (we see a flash of her as a young girl is being hit by the spray of a bullet).
 A man punches a woman (we see her bloody nose and she is unconscious as a man drags her through woods), the woman screams when she wakes up, the man tries to put her in a chokehold, they wrestle until the man slaps her again, she passes out and the attacker straddles her, trying to take off her clothing; as the man tries to pull up the woman's shirt, he is terrified by a ghostly boy and the woman awakens, knocks the man unconscious, and then smashes him in the face with a shovel and runs away. An older woman angrily slaps a woman on the face and the woman is startled. A teacher is about to whip a boy with a cane until a woman interrupts them and shouts at him and the teacher drops the cane. A teacher slaps a boy's wrist in front of a classroom of other young boys. Two boys wrestle with another boy and a man separates them. A man uses a horse crop to slap student's desks.
 An older woman poisons a woman and herself: the woman collapses, shouts for a man to get her something that will make her vomit, she has a partially lucid discussion with a boy that's a ghost, saying that she cannot live with the boy, and the boy gives her a serum to make her vomit (we see the woman lying on the ground and we later see her fully recovered). We see a man take a scalpel to a large scarred cut on his leg and a drop of blood is visible; the man then places lye in the cut and has to choke back tears from the pain.
 A man finds the dead body of another man, carries him away on his shoulder and he later tells a woman that "no one will find" the man's body, saying that he had buried other men better than him. A woman's nose begins to bleed unprovoked. A woman has dried blood on her face and shirt as she tells a man and a woman that she thinks she killed a man (we later learn that the man is dead).
 We see a spray of blood come from a raven, and it is implied that the raven dies; we later see several people stare at the dead raven under a glass case as it immediately begins to rot and is covered in maggots (we later learn it is a hoax and the raven is a fake).
 A man pulls a woman from a pond, she gasps for air as she is pulled onto a dock and we later learn that the rescuing man and an older woman believed the woman was trying to kill herself.
 A woman shouts when a hand emerges from under the water as she tries to fish for a cigarette case that she dropped in the water. A woman is startled by what appears to be a ghost behind her in a reflection. A woman is startled by a boy ghost standing behind her; the boy's face is twisted and blurry. A woman screams and backs up when a man (a ghost) appears and aims a shotgun at her, and the woman falls over. A woman screams in surprise when she runs into a man standing in a hallway. A woman screams as she rips apart a pillow.
 A woman shouts at a man, accusing him of prompting a fatal asthma attack in a young boy who was wandering the hallways of a school at night; the man regretfully admits that he had left the boy, but that he was alive and had died of an asthma attack moments later. A woman shouts at a man after the man accuses the woman of torturing herself with memories of a man's death; the woman shouts back that the man cuts open scars on his leg out of guilt that he had survived a war. A woman shouts at an older woman and boy.
 A man tells a woman that a boy had been found dead on a terrace outside a classroom. A boy asks an older woman if a rumor is true, saying that he had heard that a woman is going to "kill a ghost" and a "boy each night until he's found." A classroom of boys begs a woman to "kill it please," in reference to a ghost taking over a school, and one of the boys describes the ghost as having a "twisted face, covered in blood." A boy is visibly frightened by the idea of a ghost, telling a woman and older woman that a ghost is "going to get him." A woman tells a boy that a lion had attacked her when she was younger, adding that her parents had been killed at the same time, but a tribal leader saved her. It is implied that an older woman believes that a woman had tried to drown herself, but was saved by a man; the woman tries to explain that she had fallen into the pond and it was not on purpose. A woman explains to a man (who pulled her from a pond as she was drowning) that she had fallen in the pond, not that she had tried to commit suicide. A woman tells a boy that her fiancé had died in the war after she had told him that she did not want to marry him. A man taunts a woman, saying that her former boyfriend is not actually dead. An older man tells a woman that he has lost three children. A man reads aloud an excerpt from a novel where an elderly woman threatened to "flay the skin" from a woman. A man tells a woman that he is hiring her to investigate a death after a boy had found a ghost of a murdered child.
 An elderly man passes out and a woman pokes him in the finger with a needle to wake him; he awakens with a start.
 We see a massive painting of a woman beheading a man; blood is visible coming from a knife stabbed into the man's neck. A man spits, we see the spittle leave his mouth and it almost hits a boy's foot causing the boy to flinch. We see a urine stain on a dead boy's bed.

LANGUAGE 2 - 5 mild obscenities, name-calling (cruel and horrid, ghost-lady, lucky beggars, charlatans, wheezy Walter), 2 religious exclamations.

SUBSTANCE USE - A woman and an older woman drink sherry, and a woman turns down a glass of sherry and says that she likes to "keep her wits about her." A woman smokes cigarettes throughout the movie.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Séances, ghosts, death of a loved one, being orphaned, loneliness, adultery, haunted houses.

MESSAGE - Sometimes an event in the past can be so traumatic that a person completely blocks it until they are unexpectedly reminded.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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