Awake (2007)

Synopsis:

A man (Christensen) who suffers from “anesthetic awareness”, finds himself awake and aware, but paralyzed, during heart surgery. His young wife (Alba) must wrestle with her own demons while making life-altering decisions.

Our Thoughts:

It looks like hot-as-they-come Jessica Alba will be the first to pair up with Hayden Christensen as he starts his post-Star Wars prequel career in Awake.

The psychological/physical horror of the film’s plot sounds intriguing. Being awake for your own major surgery? Who wouldn’t get freaked out by watching yourself get cut open by impersonal doctors under those harsh, unforgiving lights? That’s enough to send chills through the body just thinking about it.

But then again, hasn’t this been done many times already? Heck, wasn’t this on “Grey’s Anatomy” last week? Not to mention a Stephen King short story (”Autopsy Room Four” from Everything’s Eventual: 14 Dark Tales) that was adapted into one of the vignettes of TNT’s “Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From The Stories Of Stephen King” mini-series, starring Richard Thomas…and “CSI” had this happen too, right?

Still, since this “anesthetic awareness” occurs in about 0.015% of patients undergoing general anesthesia, I guess it happens enough to warrant multiple looks - plus, it’s still freaky.

Also, this film looks to be the next step in Jessica Alba’s career, as she starts to gravitate toward psychological thrillers. With this film and The Eye (2008) coming out within mere months of each other, however, she may find herself becoming the next Sarah Michelle Gellar - decent career before, but now playing simpler damsel in distress roles in horror flicks. Let’s hope not. Hopefully, these psychological thrillers have more brains than gore, so she can keep her options open in the future.

While Alba gravitates towards psychological thrillers, apparently filmmakers have decided it’s been long enough since the Star Wars prequels, and are starting to bring Hayden Christensen back to the big screen. With this film coming out this month, and Jumper (2008) scheduled for February, we are about to see a lot more of this ex-Anakin.

Let’s hope we want to.