There are films that fail loudly, and then there are films that fail quietly; misjudged, misunderstood, and filed away under “not good enough” before anyone really figures out what they were trying to do. Awake belongs firmly in the latter category.
Released in 2007 with a barely-there theatrical campaign, Joby Harold’s sleek medical conspiracy thriller arrived at exactly the wrong cultural moment. Critics were merciless, audiences were uncertain, and the discourse around its stars – particularly Jessica Alba – hardened into something far more dismissive than the film itself warranted. Nearly two decades later, as Awake finds new life on Netflix (arriving Monday, January 26th), it’s worth asking whether the film was ever given a fair shot in the first place.
Because watched today, free of the noise and expectations that swirled around it in the late 2000s, Awake reveals itself as a genuinely gripping, efficiently told genre exercise – one that understands its hook, commits to its premise, and lands a twist that’s far more effective than it was ever given credit for.
The central conceit – anesthetic awareness during open-heart surgery – is nightmare fuel on its own, and Harold exploits it with confidence. The surgical sequences are claustrophobic, cruel, and unusually physical for a mainstream studio thriller. The camera lingers just long enough to make the audience uncomfortable, but never tips into exploitation. For a debut director, it’s assured work, anchored by Russell Carpenter’s cool, clinical cinematography and a pulsing score that knows when to recede and when to press in.
Where Awake was most aggressively dismissed, however, was in its performances, particularly Alba’s. Nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award at the time, Alba became an easy target in an era that delighted in tearing down young female stars, especially those perceived as “models turned actresses.” But revisiting the film now, that criticism feels lazy at best and outright wrong at worst. Her performance as Samantha Lockwood is intentionally opaque. The character is meant to register as emotionally restrained, slightly unreadable, and strategically composed. What was once derided as stiffness now reads as control – a performance calibrated for a character who is, by design, performing herself. The eventual turn lands precisely because Alba doesn’t telegraph it; she lets the film’s shift do the work. In hindsight, the problem wasn’t the performance, it was the expectation that she should be doing something louder, broader, or more demonstrative to justify her presence.
Hayden Christensen, too, benefits from reassessment. His muted, inward performance works in concert with the film’s themes of bodily imprisonment and emotional repression. And Lena Olin, frankly, has always been excellent here: operatic, chilling, and deeply strange in a way the film wisely leans into rather than apologises for.
What ultimately sank Awake in 2007 wasn’t incompetence, but tonal misalignment. Critics seemed unsure whether to take it seriously as a psychological thriller or dismiss it as glossy pulp. The answer, of course, is that it’s both, and proudly so. In an era now far more receptive to elevated genre, conspiratorial narratives, and morally compromised characters, Awake feels far more at home than it ever did on release. That it grossed over $32 million worldwide on an $8.6 million budget suggests audiences were more open to it than reviews implied; what it lacked was cultural permission – the signal that this was a film worth engaging with on its own terms rather than as a punchline.
Streaming has a way of correcting those mistakes. Freed from box office expectations and critical pile-ons, films like Awake can finally be encountered as objects rather than events. Seen now, it’s a tight, nasty little thriller with a clever genre twist, an unsettling premise, and performances that deserve reconsideration rather than ridicule. Sometimes a film doesn’t need a remake or a reboot – just time, distance, and a quieter room to be watched in.
Awake may finally be getting that chance. And honestly? It’s about time we all woke up to it.
Awake is available to stream on Netflix (Australia) from January 26th, 2026
