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Wide Awake
R1 - America - Genius Products Review written by and copyright: Jeremiah Chin (11th August 2008). |
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The Film
 After receiving “Wide Awake” (2007), I was hesitant to watch it at first thinking either A: it is a South Korean remake of the 2007 “Awake” with Hayden Christiansen, or B: it would be another terrible horror movie in the line of “The Wig” (2005) and “Voice” (2005). Luckily neither were completely true, yes it is a South Korean horror movie, but first time writer/director Kyu-Maan Lee has actually crafted a fairly interesting and fun horror movie, leagues ahead of “The Wig” and “Voice.” “Wide Awake” in the title is supposed to imply the major plot device in the film of 'Anesthesia Awareness', an apparently factual medical condition where anesthesia isn’t properly applied and the subject doesn’t become fully asleep and can keep a degree of consciousness during surgery. Already a terrifying enough concept, but Lee’s story begins with a young boy who goes under surgery to repair his heart and doesn’t go fully under, feeling the full force of the operation. The pain he felt combined with the disbelief of doctors and psychologists of his pain turns him into a sociopath, throwing baby chickens at trees, pulling the wings off of flies and suffocating them, and killing a 10 year old girl before disappearing. Flash forward to present day where there are still mysterious deaths of doctors and those connected to that boy’s surgery. Meanwhile a group of doctors and a psychologist are experimenting with hypnotic anesthesia, but they suddenly become wrapped up in the path of murders. The plot connections seem fairly convoluted without the twist ending that comes, but I actually thought the ending was fairly clever so I’ll leave it for you, dear reader, to check it out. The idea of anesthesia awareness itself is fairly frightening and Lee’s directing does a good job of showing the pain the best he can. Outside the anesthesia awareness there’s a fair amount of hypnosis which is fairly cheesy, but keeps the story interesting and moving. Unfortunately there are some definite drag moments in the movie that don’t seem to move at the right pace, the story gets hung up on some of the relationships and tries too hard to be a character drama rather than just pursue the horror elements that it has already set up. The characters created are moderately well developed, except for Hui-Jin Seo (Yoo Mi Kim) wife of Dr. Jae-U Ryu (Myung-Min Kim) who is mostly a living plot device to draw Dr. Ryu deeper into the story of intrigue and murder. There’s some over acting, especially by Dr. Seok-Ho Jang (Yoo-Seok Jung) who flares up in the medical rooms after Seo is admitted to the hospital, but otherwise the acting is fairly on par with what it should be. Musically the movie has a penchant for the over-dramatic, using big thundering scores that should be much more subtle in scenes that have a more quiet kind of creepiness. There are some scenes that do it really well, especially a hypnotic flash scene that has some cool ambient noise and visual flashes of cleverness in Lee’s directing, but when he regresses back to the fairly tedious character drama it becomes harder to hold on to the terror. Overall, this story does a good job of being creepy and staying in my head afterwards, also some fairly good gore for fellow gorehounds out there, especially the operating scenes have some good use of bone saws. The twists and turns at the end are worth sticking around for, though the 115 minute run time could have been cut down to a solid 90.
Video
Presented in a 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen aspect ratio that was transferred fairly well. There’s some noticeable grain in some scenes, but otherwise the movie is clear and the colors are fairly crisp, the blood in the operating room scenes stands out fairly brilliantly red with the lighting and coloring of the scenes that is fairly well done. There are also some good moments of visual style and color under hypnosis that are worth checking out.
Audio
The Korean Dolby Digital 5.1 surround track on the DVD is crisp and sounds good, though there’s the problem of the melodramatic score that can be a bit overbearing or under-whelming depending on the scene. The audio sounds good throughout the movie and dialogue is clear; there are a lot of vibrating cell phones that sound surprisingly realistic and not theatrically loud to get the point across. Subtitles are available only in English.
Extras
The special features for this disc include four featurettes and deleted scenes, below is a closer look. First up is “Memory Returned: The Making of Wide Awake,” this featurette runs for 38 minutes and 36 seconds which features interviews with the director and the actors going over the development and casting. Overall a fairly well put together featurette that covers the film from a variety of angles, uses behind the scenes stills and footage, and spends a fair amount of time going in to the hypnosis aspect of the film, medically and within the movie. Next is the “Production Design” featurette which runs for 13 minutes and 8 seconds and discusses the set and prop design for the different operations and medical procedures and the creation of the dummies for the operating scenes where they cut people open. A very cool featurette in terms of content, but it’s frustrating when the audio quality will occasionally drop out in the interview segments with the production designer. “Actor Interviews” featurette runs for 10 minutes and 30 seconds, and actually isn’t really interviews with the actors but there’s more of writer/director Kyu-Maan Lee than any of the actors, but they all discuss their characters and character development through the movie. Though the director makes some interesting points, it may have been better to re-title the featurette or just have more actors in the clip. “Anesthesia Awareness: About Interoperational Awareness” featurette runs for 5 minutes and 27 seconds. The director talks about how he found out about anesthesia awareness, interviewing patients in the United States and discussing how the condition occurred. It’s interesting that he couldn’t find many cases in Korea and that they were mostly based in Canada and the U.S. The deleted scenes are lumped together into one reel that in total runs for 12 minutes and 9 seconds. The first deleted scene features Dr. O having sex then talking to a patient, who is apparently a rapist, over the phone and stopping him from pursuing a woman through suggestion, this runs for about 2 minutes and 40 seconds. The next scene features Dr. Ryu giving Uk-Hwan a ride then getting into a traffic dispute, this runs for about 4 minutes and 30 seconds. Next is Dr. Ryu and his wife shelving some books and discussing her being fired which runs for about 3 minutes. Dr. Ryu and Hui-Jin roll around under the covers and talk about Uk-Hwan for about 1 minute and 30 seconds. Overall the deleted scenes feature some things that I would have liked to have seen put back in the movie to replace some of the slower scenes in the film.
Overall
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