Woken — Woken (VOD)
Woken (2024) is a dystopian sci-fi thriller arriving on UK digital on 25 May via 101 Films. Written by Alan Friel (Cake) and Rebecca Pollock (Stolen Girl), and directed by Friel in his feature-length directorial debut, the film follows Anna (Erin Kellyman), a pregnant woman who wakes on a remote island with complete amnesia, surrounded by strangers claiming to be her loved ones. As she struggles to piece together her fractured memories, she discovers a horrifying truth: humanity is on the brink of extinction, and nothing on this island is what it seems.
The opening pulls absolutely no punches. Pregnant Anna runs desperately towards a cliff edge overlooking a rough sea and throws herself off. It's the kind of hook that immediately makes you think, 'Oh, this is going to be good!' Confusion sets in quickly, because in the next scene, she is lying in a bed with a plaster on her head, and I am wondering how on earth she survived that. She doesn't recognise the woman caring for her, Helen (Maxine Peake), or the man claiming to be her husband, James (Ivanno Jeremiah). Helen hands her a photo album as proof of their life together, but Anna remains unconvinced. My immediate instinct was: Is this going to be a darker, more sinister take on Overboard (1987)? Something feels deliberately wrong about the entire dynamic. Everyone is too careful, too controlled, and all the subtle signs of untrustworthy people are quietly there from the start. When the doctor (Peter McDonald) arrives to check Anna over, Helen's demeanour changes completely. You know this man is not to be trusted.
The cinematography is impressive. The long, lingering shots and the coastal, windswept beach scenes use a muted colour palette, but sharp, bright bursts of light shine through, intentionally creating an unsettling vision that forces you to keep guessing: 'Is this good, or is this bad?' But the pacing got under my skin a little. For the first 24 minutes, very little happens. Then, at 25 minutes, something strange washes ashore. Infected, disfigured people arrive on the beach, and the film finally escalates. Since Anna doesn't understand why they're dangerous, the tension spikes, but the momentum soon fades, and then we are right back where we were at the beginning, with an incredibly slow burn.
As the film progresses, we see men in protective suits accompany the doctor, and it's then that Anna realises something isn't right. She goes on her own investigative mission, discovers something she wasn't meant to find, and the entire direction of the film shifts. What seemed like safety becomes something far more sinister.
By 54 minutes, a suspicion I'd been tracking proves correct, though the story takes a turn I didn't expect, 1 to me, 1 to the film. Contrary to what my husband thinks, I'm not always right. Answers arrive around the 1-hour-4-minute mark, which feels too late. I understand why the clues needed to be drip-fed, but the execution could have been sharper.
The final 10 minutes finally deliver genuine action and a moment that subverts genre convention, something refreshing in a landscape of predictable sci-fi thrillers. The performances from the female leads are excellent throughout, anchored by a script with no real plot holes. What stays with me is how Friel and Pollock handle their female characters in the final act. When a woman is backed into a corner and forced to act, she doesn't hesitate. She doesn't waver or show mercy. She just does it. I wonder if this was Pollock's influence, because this is how we women want to be seen, not as the defenceless, scared women who can't follow through when it matters, as we often see in cinema. It's a refreshing refusal to play by the usual rules of thrillers, where women often pause, reconsider, or get overpowered. Maxine Peake brings that steely determination to life perfectly.
The pacing issues and the slow middle section mean it doesn't quite reach the heights it aims for. It's a promising directorial debut that demonstrates real potential, even if, for me, this particular execution falls slightly short of its artistic ambitions. However, the reveal of what's actually happening is good. Everything and nothing! Everything was drip-fed to you, but nothing could have prepared you for it. When it landed, it was a wow moment. That's what pushes this from a 2 to a 3.